A week has passed since the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing and it seems that the Israeli delegation is satisfied with the athletes' performance in blue and white so far, probably after the great achievement of skier Bernbash (Bernie) Solush, who finished sixth in the combined competition.
The one who closely follows the Games from China is the chairman of the Olympic Committee, Yael Arad, who in a special interview with "Israel Today", talks about the atmosphere in the delegation, the public reactions to athletes not all born and living in Israel and looking forward to Italy in four years.
"It was a great excitement, to see Bernie's achievement, inconceivable," says Arad.
"Anyway, this family. I spent a lot of time with them last week, it's an amazing family. The father too, but the kids in particular, are intelligent and fluent, they have exceptional English, they are so nice and valued and fun that they were so successful."
"If you have to describe how the athletes will look or behave, it's like these two brothers. They are very young and Bernie is also the youngest in the yearbook and I talked to Noa, who said the achievements start at 24 and the top at 26 and she is now only 19."
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Is it possible to dream of a medal in four years in Italy?
"It would be pretentious on my part, to scatter promises, but I can say that our skiing company came prepared, both physically and mentally amazingly. If you frustrate both, in all the professions that have participated so far, they have exceeded their expectations."
There are reactions in the public that are hard to get.
"It's legitimate. The very fact that the winter disciplines are not well known, I myself insisted on flying here, to be once and for all in the Winter Olympics, to get to know and understand these disciplines, to learn their professional side. Until you are here, you too as journalists, very difficult Connect to it remotely. "
Bernie Solosh with an amazing achievement in Beijing,
"It seems to me that in Israel people love skiing, in Israel there are a lot of ski enthusiasts. The international criterion was to be ranked 500 and we in the Israeli criterion were more stringent - to be 200. In the end we have a team made up of Israelis born in Israel, also Jews who train abroad, but all with heart "He loves Israel very much, and they are part of us and we should be proud of that."
"In a lot of teams in the world, both in summer and winter, there are athletes who represent another country like Georgians who represent Germany and so on. We allow Jews in the Diaspora to form the delegation with us. The most significant thing is: 1. that they are part of us and 2. We will succeed through them. Not only to produce successes as talents, but to slowly build our youth. "
"This is what we do in figure skating, when we also have the classes in Holon, even Israeli athletes who are starting to climb up and represent us in the world, the same thing we can do in skiing."
Bernie and Noa Solush.
Will the reactions in the public be better after the winter games ?,
In figure skating we seem to have gone backwards in this campaign, of course the delegation is a third smaller than four years ago.
"I think we have to wait until the end of the Olympics to have a pair of skaters, the competition is not over yet. Alexei Bichenko certainly did not succeed and it's part of coming to the Olympics. Not everyone succeeds in the end. It's unfortunate, it sucks, first of all for him but also for us, it "Part of being an Olympic athlete, or an accomplished athlete in general. And we keep our fingers crossed for the other athletes in our delegation."
"We were in Pyongyang four years ago with ten athletes and here we are with three. The expectation is that with the hard work done and the youth teams, we will return to Milan-Cortina in Italy in 2026 with a full team."
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