Israel: We were robbed
OLYMPICS ISRAEL’S hopes of a third medal to add to the two bronzes won in judo were dashed on the final day in Rio when the rhythmic g y mnast i c s t e a m p u t i n a n impressive performance, but could only finish in sixth place.
And the team coach later hit out at what she described as “non-objective” judging , and claimed that other teams had been allocated far better training conditions than Israel.
Their five gymnasts — Alona Koshevatskiy Ekaterina Levina, Karina Lykhvar, Ida Mayrin and Yuval Filo — were let down by poor handling in the ribbon event, but finished strongly in the clubs and hoops.
However, coach Ira Vigdorchik claimed that politics had played a part in Israel’s final position.
“I never expected to win a medal,” she said. “But even if we were to perform without any mistakes, there was no chance to bring one back from Rio.
“There is a situation that happens only at the Olympics. In every other competition every country brings a judge, including us, but as soon as we come to the Olympics , we don’t have a representative and we have a problem. Spain has a judge in the International Gymnastics Federation, Bulgaria has a judge, Japan has a judge. These are strong countries and we have no way to deal with it.”
The Israeli team finished with a total score of 34.549 points, well behind gold-medallist Russia’s 36.233 points. Spain and Bulgaria tied for the silver both with 35.766.
Israel’s team, which won a gold in the hoops and clubs discipline at the European Championships in June, had been considered the country’s best hope for gold at the games. That result meant t hat I s r a e l ’ s r e c ord 47 s t r ong Olympic squad returned home f r o m R i o w i t h t w o b r o n z e medals and seven appearances in finals — both better and worse than the single medal and 10 finals that Olympic Committee of Israel head Gili Lustig had defined as his yardstick for success.
He said: “Especially after London, when we came home without a med- al, we wanted this time to return with at least one and I’m glad we achieved two.
“We also had our first f emale competitor on the medal podium since 1992 and a superb performance in the triple jump by Hanna Knyazyeva-Minenko who finished fifth and improved on the previous best ever Israeli Olympic athletics result by Esther Roth, who finished sixth in the 100 metres hurdles in Montreal in 1976.”
But Lustig added: “We expected more finals and hadanumberof goodcandidates such as Golan Pollack and Gili Cohen [judo], Alex Shatilov [gymnastics], Sergey Richter [shooting], Yakov Toumarkin [swimming], Shahar Zubari [windsurfing] and Ilana Kratysh [wrestling]. We expected more from them, but I would still have settled in advance for the results that we achieved.”
Other disappointments in the closing days of competition were Ron Atias in taekwondo, who bowed out in the opening round and Neta Rivkin, who failed to reach the final of the rhythmic gymnastics individual competition. In golf, Laetitia Beck finished in a creditable 31st place, midway among the 60 competitors.
In addition, Israel’s three marathon runners joined 152 others to take part in the final event on Sunday.
Marhu Teferi, the national halfmarathon champion, was the fastest of the three, finishing in 74th place in a time of 2:21:06, 12.22 behind the winner, Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge. Tesama Moogas was 121st in 2:30:30, while Ageze Guadie, came 122nd in 2:30:45. Olympic Committee of Israel Sports Director Danny Oren said: “We’ll have to analyse the sporting performances thoroughly and draw conclusions so we can improve for 2020. We’ll have to do some soul searching in swimming where we expected much better. We have to work in a much more focused way in sailing, as we do in judo, and in athletics we were very disappointing with the exception of Hanna Knyazyeva-Minenko.”
JORDAN won its first-ever Olympic medal when Ahmad Abu Ghaush took gold in the U68kg taekwondo. His parents come from the Israeli village of Abu Ghosh near Jerusalem, which is planning a reception for their Olympic champion.