36 Israeli athletes embark on quest for Olympic

13/08/2004 Judoka Arik Ze’evi will carry the Israeli flag at the opening ceremony of the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens tonight. Ze’evi, a three-time European champion in the under-100 kilo category, will march at the head of an Israeli delegation that is widely considered the best the country has ever sent to the Games. A total of 36 Israeli athletes competing in 15 disciplines will be participating in the Games, and Israel Olympic chairman Ephraim Zinger has said that he expects the delegation to bring home three medals, including a first-ever gold. Since it first competed at the Games in Helsinki in 1952, Israel has won a total of four medals. Judoka Yael Arad was the first to claim honors for Israel with a silver medal in 1992 in Barcelona, where Oren Smadja added bronze in the men’s judo event. Gal Friedman claimed bronze four year’s later in the mistral surfboard and Michael Kalganov took Israel’s last medal, a bronze in the 1,000-meter kayak in Sydney four years ago. Friedman and Kalganov are expected to challenge once again for medals, with the windsurfer marked as one of Israel’s gold medal hopefuls along with Ze’evi, Greco-Roman wrestler Gocha Tsitsiashvili and pole vaulter Alex Averbukh. A total of nine Israeli athletes will be in on the first day of competition tomorrow. Veteran shooter Alex Danilov will be first to go for Israel, competing in the qualifiers of the 50-meter pistol in the morning, where he is hoping to erase the shame of his early disqualification in Sydney with a place in the finals later the same day. Next in is swimmer Vered Borochovsky in the qualifying heats of the 100 meters butterfly in the morning that should see her through to the evening’s semifinal. Borochovsky, who will also be competing in the 200 meter individual medley, said yesterday that her aim was to break the Israeli record and that with a bit of luck she could gain a place in the final. Judoka Gal Yekutiel, gymnast Pavel Gofman and women’s table tennis player Marina Kravchenko will all compete tomorrow in the qualifiers of their events, while world and European bronze medalists Nika Kornitzky and Vered Buskila begin their quest for glory in the women’s 470 class double-handed dinghy.


In the men’s 470 event, Gidi Klieger and Udi Gal, the 2001 European silver medalists, will also take part in their first race Saturday. Since winning the European silver, Klieger and Gal have come close to medals at both the European and world championships, but have failed to mount the podium on each occasion. Yesterday, 11 of the Israeli athletes who had yet to arrive in Athens joined their teamamates after an early morning flight from Tel Aviv. The athletes were treated to an unpleasant surprise when the terminal was evacuated after a bomb scare, but that failed to dampen their spirits. Tennis double pair Any Ram and Yoni Erlich were upbeat about their chances of pulling off a surprise in Athens. „We are in great shape and have had some fantastic results in the past month,” said Ram.