Miracle on Ice, Israeli Edition: The Country’s First Bobsled Team Is Heading to Winter Olympics

A small group of athletes from a country with no winter sports tradition has carved out a historic spot in the upcoming 2026 Milano Cortina Games. Israel will send a bobsled team to the Winter Olympics for the first time in its history, an achievement born from persistence, improvisation and belief in an eight-year dream that refused to die.The team, piloted by AJ Edelman, earned its Olympic berth following reallocation after finishing one place shy of direct qualification. The door to history was opened when Great Britain chose to enter a single sled instead of two, freeing a spot that Israel eagerly accepted.“This is a historic achievement,” the Olympic Committee of Israel said in a statement after receiving the invitation from the International Olympic Committee.For Mr. Edelman, the moment represents the culmination of a mission that began not in a snowy alpine village, but under the desert sun in a nation without a single regulation ice track.“Dreams do come true,” Mr. Edelman said. “The Israeli Bobsled Team is now the Israeli Olympic Bobsled Team. We are headed to Milan.”Such a statement would have seemed improbable a decade ago. Israel’s sporting identity has rested in judo, soccer and basketball. Anything to do with ice seemed logically impossible, until now.In addition to Mr. Edelman, the team includes Menachem Chen, Ward Fawarseh and Omer Katz with Uri Zisman serving as an alternate if needed. Other Israeli athletes competing in the Olympics include skeleton athlete Jared Firestone, alpine skiers Noa and Barnabos Szollos, figure skater Mariia Seniuk and cross country skier Attila Mihaly Kertesz. The total nearly doubles the country’s previous Winter Games representation.An American Israeli dual citizen, Mr. Edelman first represented Israel in skeleton at the 2018 Winter Olympics. Skelton is where the competitor rides headfirst while lying face down on a flat sled.After narrowly missing qualification for the 2022 Games, he resolved to create a bobsled team, captivated by the sport’s demand for raw speed, timing and teamwork. Mr. Edelman hoped an underdog bobsled program could place Israel on the winter sports map.Supporters financed the grassroots campaign, providing equipment, training time and travel expenses across continents. Coaches volunteered and because Israel has no permanent bobsled track ice, time was borrowed in North America and Europe. Athletes also had to balance national service commitments and employment responsibilities.The process became even more complicated when Israel’s Olympic Committee ordered the team to stop using non-Israeli athletes in qualification races, even though international rules allowed mixed-nationality sleds.Racing with only Israeli citizens in qualifications events in Lake Placid, New York, Mr. Edelman’s group performed well enough to remain eligible for reallocation which led to the ultimate invitation.President of the Israeli Olympic Bobsled and Skelton Federation, David Greaves, called the invitation a realization of a journey that began when the country’s first bobsled concept was broached in 2002.“At the Olympic Games with all the eyes from around the world, to see the Israeli flag flying at the bobsled and skeleton track is something that will be forever meaningful to all of us,” he said.Comparisons to Jamaica’s famous 1988 Olympic bobsled debut, immortalized in the movie “Cool Runnings,” are inevitable. But while Jamaica’s story was known for improvisation and humor, Israel’s version has been defined by relentless planning and endurance, culminating in an invitation to one of the most ambitious, expansive and culturally significant Winter Olympics in decades.A global stage reawakensCurling launches the Olympic competition on Feb. 4 with the opening ceremonies two days later. Over 16 sports with 116 gold medals at stake will be contested from Milan’s urban arenas to the Dolomite peaks of Cortina d’Ampezzo, a 250-mile difference making this the most geographically spread Winter Games in history.Verona hosts the closing ceremony. New events debuting this year include ski mountaineering, mixed team skeleton, and women’s large-hill ski jumping.The athlete’s village in Cortina is a cluster of 350 mobile homes, while hockey arenas in Milan are barely ready after being under construction late last year. The rinks will be smaller than those used in the NHL, promising faster, tighter games.More than 3,500 athletes from 93 countries are expected to compete.NHL players make their returnProfessional players from the NHL return to Olympic ice for the first time since the 2014 Games in Sochi. The United States, buoyed by decades of growth and an infusion of elite talent, believes this is its best chance to win gold since the 1980 “Miracle on Ice.”Canada has won every major international men’s hockey tournament over the past 16 years featuring NHL players. The nucleus of Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar make it the gold-medal favorite in Italy.But the U.S. has spent decades closing the gap. Its national development program has matured. Youth participation has surged. And recent international results suggest the Americans are no longer chasing Canada, they’re challenging them.“This is the best USA team that I’ve seen,” retired U.S. winger T.J. Oshie said. “And if they can come together like they did in the 4 Nations, I think that for the first time, I’d say it’s a pretty fair fight going in.”Without the Russians competing under their national flag, European powerhouses Sweden and defending Olympic champion Finland figure to contend as will the Czechs and Germans.The men’s and women’s hockey competition will be played in rinks that are 196.5-by-85.3 feet. NHL dimensions are 200-by-85 feet, making the Olympic rinks slightly wider and more than 3-feet shorter. Olympic organizers said the dimensions were used at the Beijing Games in 2022 and view them as “insignificant and should not impact either the safety and quality of play.”Construction of the Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena, a 16,000-seat venue on the outskirts of Milan was behind schedule as of late last year but will be ready for the opening of competition scheduled from Feb. 5-19 for women and Feb. 11-22 for the men.Stars and Stripes on the SlopesAmerica’s rooting interests aren’t limited to hockey. Lindsey Vonn, 41 years old and racing on a titanium knee, stunned the skiing world by opening the season by winning the World Cup downhill to become the oldest winner in the sport’s history.Not much was expected when she announced that she was coming out of her 2019 retirement in an attempt to make the 2026 Olympic team. Some even questioned her sanity. But her World Cup victory makes her one of the most intriguing stories of the Olympics. “All the people that didn’t believe in me, I have to thank them,” she said. Every time you talk bad about me, it makes me stronger.”Her comeback story adds to the U.S. women’s alpine team anchored by Mikaela Shiffrin, who recently captured her ninth career slalom season title, a record unmatched in six decades of World Cup competition. Ms. Shiffrin, who has 71 career race wins in slalom and 108 victories overall, arrives at Cortina looking to atone for a disappointing 2022 Games where she failed to medal after earning a slalom gold in 2014 and gold in the giant slalom in 2018. “At the Olympics, it’s a totally different challenge,” she said. “I try to go in with an open mind and good spirit trusting my team.”A New Skating StandardAll eyes will be on Ilia Malinin, 21, of Virginia to see if he can deliver on the Olympic stage and cement his dominance in men’s figure skating. Mr. Malinin has won the past two world championships and hasn’t lost a competition in two years. He also has won the national championship four straight times.He comes from good skating genes. His Russian-born mother, Tatiana Malinina, competed in the 1998 Olympics for Uzbekistan, while his Russian-born father Roman Skorniakove, competed for Uzbekistan at the 1998 and 2002 Winter Games.“We’ve been planning a strategic plan to prepare myself mentally and physically so when I get to the Olympics, that’s when I’m at my peak,” Mr. Malinin told the Associated Press. “We’ve talked for months about managing what I train and how I train specifically and what I’m going to do at all the competitions.”Mr. Malinin, fluent in English and Russian, is the first and only skater to successfully land a fully rotated quadruple Axel in international competition, a feat he has performed multiple times since 2022.“He’s the son of two incredible figure skaters, and he’s just built, quite literally, different,” U.S. skater Amber Glenn said. “It’s insane. He’s both talented and hard-working and it’s amazing what he does.”Gender parity in the mountainsBeyond the individual stars, Milano Cortina marks another milestone in Olympic evolution: near equal gender representation. After the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris made headlines for becoming the first Olympic Games with full gender parity on the field, the Milan Cortina Olympics will be the most gender equal Winter Game in history with 47 percent of the athletes being women. That figure represents a 1.6 percent increase from the 2022 Beijing Olympics.A record 50 out of 118 events at the 2026 Winter Games are women’s events, four more than in Beijing 2022. There are also 12 mixed events scheduled.Nordic Combined, which features ski-jumping and cross-country skiing, is the only Olympic competition without a women’s division, despite there being 217 women who compete internationally.The numbers reflect a long arc of progress. Women first competed in the Olympics in 1900 when they made up just 2.2 percent of those participating. The percentage has steadily increased since then to 23 percent at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, 44 percent in London 2012 and 49 percent at Paris.Meanwhile, 50 percent of the positions on the International Olympics Committee commissions are held by women and 47 percent of the IOC’s executive board members are women.The 2026 Winter Games are designed to be a blend of urban spectacle with mountain traditions, while inviting new nations, new sports, and new narratives, like the Israeli bobsled team, already a miracle on ice.

Miracle on Ice, Israeli Edition: The Country’s First Bobsled Team Is Heading to Winter Olympics

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