Israel will send an archer to the Olympics for the first time ever, the Olympic Committee said Monday. Itay Shanny qualified for the Tokyo 2020 games in a competition held in Paris earlier in the day.
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Shanny, 22, scored 656 points and placed 23rd out of 94 competitors in the initial qualifying round, which was followed by a series of knockout rounds.
He first defeated 90th seed Oliver Ormar Ingvarsson (Iceland) 6-0 and defeated 42nd seed from Latvia Janis Brunis 6-2. He went on to take a surprise 6-5 victory over 10th seed, Senna Roos of Belgium, to reach the round of 16.
Against Croatia's Alen Remar, who placed 7th in the qualifying round, Shanny claimed a 6-4 victory, qualifying for the final eight and securing a berth for the Olympics, which begin next month.
In the quarter-finals, Shanny lost 3-7 to the eventual winner of the event, the second-seeded Russian, Galsan Bazarzhapov.
"I'm still trying to deal with it all," Shanny said after the tournament. "It's something I've been working on for years and reaching this point is unreal. It's a great feeling. I managed to get rid of my nerves and I was focused, like in another world."
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While Shanny will be the country's first archer in the Olympics, he is not the first to meet the Olympic quota: His coach, Guy Matzkin, achieved the Olympic benchmark for the 2012 London Games, but did not compete because he did not meet an additional Israeli benchmark, which Shanny has met.
Israel's Olympic team now includes 81 athletes in 17 different sports, with more and more qualifying in recent days, and the next few days are expected to bring more, eclipsing the previous record of 47 Israeli athletes in Rio in 2016.
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
