Paralympic taekwondo fighter Assaf Yasur won a gold medal at the World Taekwondo Championships held in Istanbul, Turkey on Saturday.

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Yasur, 19, competed in the under-58 kilogram category and defeated his Turkish opponent – 2019 bronze medalist Ali Can Ozcan – in the championship final by a score of 42:57, winning his first international medal.

On his way to victory, Yasur overcame opponents from India with a whopping score of 2:32, Guatemala (0:30) Mongolia (10:16), and Russia (4:13).

Yasur lost both hands at the age of 13 in an electrocution accident. Upon recovery, he began to train in Para Taekwondo. He has now set his sight on the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris.

"I am the happiest person for the way I performed, for the medal and for this crazy day," Yasur said shortly after his victory.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid congratulated Yasur on Twitter saying he was "not just a source of huge national pride for our country, but he is also a reminder that willpower can take you to the highest peaks."

Culture and Sports Minister Hili Tropper also congratualted the champion.

"Five months ago I met Yasur and I knew that he would go on to win a medal. It was not a wild guess, simply because everyone who meets this wonderful young man understands that for him, the sky is the limit. He lost both hands a few days before his bar mitzvah, but did not lose his willpower or ambition for even a moment," he said.

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The entire world is poised for the Tokyo Olympics closing ceremony to take place Sunday evening. When the games began slightly more than two weeks ago, not even Japan was thrilled about having to host the games in the middle of a global pandemic. And while one might debate whether it was wise of the International Committee to go forward with the competition during the coronavirus, this year's games will undoubtedly go down as one of the most unique in Olympic history.

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For Israel, in particular, this year's competition was a clear success.

First off, Israel sent its largest-ever delegation to the games in 2021. More than 80 athletes competed in surfing, judo, track and field, taekwondo, swimming, gymnastics, baseball, and for the first time, arching. 

Israeli Olympian Avishag Samberg scored the Jewish state its first medal on July 24, winning the bronze in taekwondo. On July 31, the mixed judo team brought Isreal it's second bronze medal.

On August 1, Artem Dolgopyat made history, winning Israel's first Olympic gold medal in artistic gymnastics in the men's floor exercise final at Ariake Gymnastics Center in Tokyo. And on Aug. 7, powerhouse rhythmic gymnast Linoy Ashram won the gold medal in the rhythmic gymnastics individual competition, ending Russia's decades-long dominance in the sport and bringing Israel its second Olympic gold medal.

Women, in particular, sent a powerful message in this year's games.  They set records everyone saw coming and others that surprised the experts. Over nine days at the near-empty Olympic Stadium, the women of track and field delivered a memorable show, both inside the lines and out.

Theirs was a sport in need of a good boost, not only because of the year-long delay sparked by the virus, but because no matter when they returned, Usain Bolt would no longer draw eyes to the track simply by showing up.

These women – Sifan Hassan, Sydney McLaughlin, Elaine Thompson-Herah, Raven Saunders and Allyson Felix – delivered a series of inspiring performances and messages that showed the heart of their sport was still beating strong.

Some highlights included:

Hassan, an Ethiopian-born Dutch middle- and long-distance runner, and her unrelenting journey toward three medals – two gold and one bronze – in three of the longest races held on the track.

She started with gold in the 5,000 meters, then came back with bronze in the 1,500. She closed the show Saturday with a gold-medal run in the 10,000 – one in which her vision was so clouded by exhaustion that she admitted she could not see the finish line.

"I'm so happy," she said after the odyssey – six races over eight nights covering 65 laps and 24 kilometers – was finally complete "I'm relieved. I'm finished. I can sleep."

McLaughlin, an American hurdler and sprinter, whose back-and-forth duals in the 400-meter hurdles with US teammate Dalilah Muhammad reached a crescendo at the Olympics.

It was a race that had been much-anticipated and all but preordained to again reset the world record that one or the other had broken in three previous showdowns.

And they lived up to the hype. McLaughlin lowered her own mark to 51.46 seconds. Just as impressively, Muhammad's silver-medal time of 51.58 would have been a world record, too.

"I think it's two athletes wanting to be their best," McLaughlin said, "and knowing there's another great girl who's going to help you get there."

The sprinters were fast through the leadup to the Olympics, so it wasn't all that surprising to see that pace keep going in Tokyo.

But while most of the pre-Games buzz went to Jamaica's Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (100) and American Gabby Thomas (200), each of whom briefly staked their claim as the second-fastest women in history at their respective distances, it was Jamaican sprinter Thompson-Herah who wound up there in the end.

After a slow start to the season because of an Achilles injury, Thompson-Herah swept the 100 and 200 sprints for the second straight time. One more like that and she'll match Bolt.

She ran the 200 in 21.53 and set the Olympic record in the 100: 10.61 seconds. Though that record might not be the most formidable of the marks Florence Griffith Joyner set a generation ago, in 1988, it had been around every bit as long.

Flo Jo's world records of 10.49 and 21.34 still stand. But for how long?

"By the Olympic finish, I'll probably see what I've done," said Thompson-Herah, who at 29, assures us she is not done yet. "At this moment, I'm just a normal girl."

The story of US track and field athlete Saunders was inspiration for anyone who has been overlooked or left behind. The Black, gay American shot putter started wearing "Incredible Hulk" masks to the field – a way of projecting her fierce competitive spirit, but also a lighter side underneath.

After she received her silver medal, Saunders crossed her arms and formed an "X" on the medals stand. "The intersection of where all people who are oppressed meet," she explained.

It was the sort of message many believe should not only be tolerated, but embraced, when Olympic athletes get their all-too-short time in the spotlight. The IOC, which after much debate and discussion over the past two years still chose to ban such demonstrations, said it would look into it. Any probe was set aside when Saunders' mother died unexpectedly only hours after she won the medal.

And Felix closed the show.

For five Olympics spanning 16 – make that 17 – years, she was epitome of class and speed. At 35 years old, she called it a career, but not without doing what she does better than any runner alive: Winning medals.

Her bronze in the 400 and gold in the 4x400 relay gave her 11. She now has more than any track athlete in history, save a Finnish distance runner, Paavo Nurmi, who won 12 between 1920 and 1928.

Felix has more to do. Since having her baby, Cammy, in 2018 she has transformed herself into one of the most outspoken advocates for women in sports.

"I feel like it's definitely been a journey for me to get to the point where I guess I had the courage to do so," Felix said.

She earned the platform with two decades of racing in which she won some, and lost some, and kept on coming back for more.

Now, it's time to see who takes her place.

Earlier in the meet, someone asked Muhammad, what she thought about all this women's dominance at the track – of America's seven gold medals in track and field, they won five.

"Women do it better," she quipped.

After watching them conquer records, overcome obstacles and make their messages heard over nine days and nights at the Olympic track, it was hard to say she was wrong.

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Sunday's taekwondo match between Kimia Alizadeh and Iran's Nahid Kiyanichandeh at the Tokyo Olympic Games is not one viewers will likely forget soon.

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Alizadeh is a former Iranian taekwondoin, who won a bronze medal for the Islamist Republic at the Rio Olympics back in 2016, the only woman to do so in her homeland's history. She has since fled to Germany, after having had enough of the regime that used her as a propaganda tool, she said.

Iran has a long history of using its athletes for its political agendas. It has repeatedly withdrawn athletes from international competitions that would match them up against Israeli athletes and in 2020 executed 27-year-old judoka Navid Afkari who dared criticize the regime.

Competing under the white flag of the Refugee Olympic team, 23-year old Alizadeh beat former compatriot Kiyanichandeh in the women's 57 kilograms (125 pounds) elimination round.

She was a clear favorite in the arena, and was received with applause by members of the media and the few spectators present in the venue. No general public viewers are allowed this year inside the Olympic arenas due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Cheers erupted again when Alizadeh finished the match against Kiyanichandeh with an 18-9 win. She is one of three taekwondoins and 29 athletes competing for the refugee team at Tokyo.

After qualifying in the elimination round, Alizadeh went up against Britain's Jade Jones, stripping the British athlete of her dream of becoming a three-time consecutive gold medalist.

She went on to defeat China's Zhou Lijun in the quarterfinals, and came within striking distance of winning a bronze medal, but lost in the semi-finals against Turkey's Hatice Kubra Ilgun.

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A defector from Iran who competes in taekwondo for the refugee team at the Tokyo Olympics was drawn on Thursday to face an Iranian opponent in the qualifying round.

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Kimia Alizadeh, who left Iran citing institutional sexism, will face Nahid Kiyani Chandeh in the 57-kilogram class on Sunday.

Alizadeh was the first Iranian women to win an Olympic medal when she took bronze at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games when she was 18. She later criticized wearing the mandatory hijab headscarf, which she had to wear in Rio, and left Iran to live in Germany.

"I have a great feeling to have made a decision for my life that would definitely change my future," she said last year in Germany.

Alizadeh was selected for the 29-athlete Refugee Olympic Team last month.

The two-time world championship medalist and 2014 Youth Olympics champion needed an invitation to join the 16 athletes who qualified for the 57kg featherweight category at the Tokyo Games.

The extra entry made an odd-numbered lineup, requiring a qualifying round to advance to the main bracket. The draw landed Alizadeh against an opponent from her former country.

The winner at the Makuhari Messe near Tokyo will advance to the round of 16 and face defending champion Jade Jones of Britain less than two hours later.

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