Israel's 12th Olympic medal came 29 years and two days after judoka Yael Arad won the country's first Olympic silver in the 1992 Barcelona Games. The first medal is always significant, but on Sunday, Israel won the gold medal in one of the Olympic Games' core competitions: athletics, gymnastics, and swimming, listed here in order of importance. Israel is an undisputed gold medal champion now that Artem Dolgopyat made it to the finals after doing better than all of his competitors in the qualifying round.
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Israel is a tribal-mentality country, and the greatest joy is when all the tribes share 12 medals among them. Beyond the magnitude of the hour, there was incredible strength in the restraint shown by Dolgopyat in his victory. This man, unlike the wonderful Avishag Semberg, who won the bronze medal in taekwondo, has no followers on Instagram. Even in his modest blue and white attire, he looked like an athlete from the 1950s, so different from the noise and commotion of this country but yet so similar and full of self-reflection.
There is nothing more dangerous than coming in first in the qualifying round and waiting one nerve-wracking week just to prove your performance wasn't a one-off. Thankfully, he had his coach, Sergey Weisberg, the man who founded Israeli gymnastics, with him, as well as Alexander Shatilov, the mentor without him Dolgopyat would not be the athlete he was able to become.
This gold medal, along with the other medals and 13 finals in other fields in Tokyo, is a wake-up call for an Israeli government that on Sunday, stopped a cabinet meeting to watch Dolgopyat bestow more honor on Israel than any diplomat could ever hope to achieve in their career. Israel invests less than any other Western country in sports, and yet the winner of the greatest prize in Tokyo is set to receive half the money the winner of the Big Brother reality TV show will see.
For Israel to become a true sports state, and not a place where individual athletes shine, government meetings are needed on the issue, as are investments in infrastructure and manpower. Until that day comes, Dolpogyat will be a rare diamond in Israeli sports.
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