Medal optimism on the water for Israelis

Israel had some pleasant surprises and quality results in the pool and in the sea on Tuesday at the Paris Olympic Games, but also once again struggled on the judo mat.

It was a fine day in the ocean by Marseille as Israeli windsurfers Sharon Kantor and Tom Reuveny recorded wonderful results to place themselves in a position to battle for a medal. On Monday, Kantor had completed her first two races finishing in 15th place but then was subsequently disqualified while in the second she finished in first, but the officials judged that there was not enough wind in the second race forcing the competitors to redo the race where Kantor finished in sixth place.

However, on Tuesday it was Kantor’s day as she began the day with a 10th-place finish in the third race, followed by a pair of first-place finishes in the fourth and fifth races, while in race six she finished in third and the seventh in fourth to place her second overall.

Only Great Britain's Emma Wilson is ahead of the Israeli after having won four races, finished second in a pair and was disqualified from one.

Reuveny only completed his first race on Monday and finished in eighth place before the decision was made to postpone the rest of the day’s races. But on Tuesday, the Israeli raced his way into third place overall with a 13th-place finish in his second race, fifth in race three which was followed by a spur of third-place finishes in his fourth and fifth races and a fourth-place finish in his sixth race to give him third.

Both Kantor and Reuveny will be back in the water on Wednesday as they continue their respective windsurfing events.

In the pool, the Israel Men's 4 x 200m freestyle relay team of Denis Loktev, Bar Soloveychik, Eitan Ben Shitrit and Gal Cohen Groumi finished fifth in their semifinal heat and a stellar eighth overall tied with Japan with a total time of 7:08.43 to advance to the finals of the competition. Cohen Groumi, the final swimmer and anchor of the blue-and-white swam a spectacular 1:45.57 to help the squad just slip into the final ahead of Italy.

Cohen Groumi spoke about the team’s performance to advance to the final.

“It was a good race for us, we all feel amazing , it was great.” Soloveitchik added, “We really prepared mentally for these Games and our only goal was to advance to the final.”

Bringing nachas to the Olympics

Ben Shatrit shared a sense of national pride.

“We saw the Israeli flags in the stands and it gave us a tremendous amount of pride.”

Loktev was overwhelmed with excitement.

“We worked on this a lot, we have been preparing for this since 2016.”

In the Men's 100m freestyle, Tomer Frankel ended in second place in Heat 7 but didn’t advance with a time of 48.66, finishing 21st overall.

Over in badminton, Misha Zilberman was eliminated after falling 2-0 to Olympic and World Champion Viktor Axelsen from Denmark in what was his fourth Games where he had yet to advance out of the group stages. Zilberman will still compete in his final group stage match on Wednesday but his fate has already been sealed.

With the defeat, Zilberman will be stepping away from the sport for an indefinite period of time he explained.

“It's hard to beat Viktor even on my good day. I played well, but I had to find the height and move him around, there were parts of the match that I was able to do that, but I struggled later on. Getting through the group stage is the most difficult part because I have to beat someone from the top 13 in the world when my highest ranking was 33. So it's a very difficult task and the fact that I made it to the Olympic Games is already an achievement. My goal was to get one win in the group stage.

“After the Olympic Games in Paris I will take a break to fill in some of the gaps in my life and start a family. Badminton is not popular in Israel and it’s not possible to practice twice a day, it’s either I work myself or I have to fly abroad. But I want to live in Israel and I have sacrificed a lot for my career. It is very difficult. It's been 16 years since I sacrificed every day for four Olympic Games, so you need a break to live.”

Zilberman does see that the sport has started to gain some grass roots support in Israel.

“Badminton is a developing sport in Israel. There are leagues in schools and there is more participation. A large part of why this is happening is because people have seen me play and for the fact that I have reached the highest levels. The popularity of badminton is increasing little by little and I hope that in the future there will be good players like me to continue my path and be at my level. I only wish that this will happen.”

On the judo mat, Gili Sharir fell in the Round of 32 to one of the top -63kg judokas in the world in France’s Clarisse Agbegnenou 1-0 in Golden Score.

“I gave my heart on the mat,” Sharir said. “I entered the bout with the belief that I could do it and beat her, but that's the sport and that's what's cruel about it. Clarisse is well known and I grew up admiring her. I battled against her with all of my heart and soul in this bout. I fought against Clarisse in her home nation and I tried to ignore the background noise and concentrate on the encouragement that I was getting from the Israelis, but in the end I lost. I have worked all of my life for moments like this, I arrived here prepared and am disappointed to go out in the first fight of the competition.”

Former world champion Sagi Muki was also in action in the -82kg category as he defeated Timo Cavelius in the Round of 32 but then fell to Joonhwan Kor Lee from South Korea in the Round of 16.

“It was a very difficult fight from the mental point of view,” Muki said after being eliminated. “We both kept to our fight plan and it was an intense battle. It went to Golden score and it was a long fight. You see the holds, but in every hold there is a lot of strength. Kor Lee is the third best judoka in the competition and I am proud of how I battled in the end. I made sure not to worry about anything around me, but to just be proud of myself.”

In Tahiti, Anat Lelior’s third round of Women’s Surfing matchup against Tyler Wright from Australia, who is not only the two-time World Champion in 2016 and 2017 but also finished ahead of Lelior in round 1, was postponed due to inclement weather.

The triathlon was postponed due to the pollution in the Seine River as Israeli Shachar Sagiv will have to wait until the waterways clear up for the competition to take place, which will hopefully be on Wednesday.