The Jewish calendar year 5786 has come to an end, and despite the fact that Israeli clubs and national teams in various sports are still forced to host their international competition games abroad, and despite the considerable hatred our athletes have had to contend with overseas, there were also quite a few great moments in Israeli sports. Three ynet writers came together to choose the standout achievement of the past year: Check them out!
Not just a reserve team, but the future // Ra’anan Weiss
Silver medal for Israel’s U20 women at EuroBasket
Some achievements are measured by the color of the medal, and others by what they leave behind. The silver medal won by Israel’s women’s U20 national team at this summer’s European Championship undoubtedly belongs to the second category.
The remarkable run in Lithuania delivered, above all, a statement: Israeli women’s basketball has a young, talented and, most importantly, hungry generation capable of looking Europe’s powerhouses straight in the eye.
Much more than a medal. Israel’s women’s U20 national team celebrates
(Photo: FIBA Photos)
On one hand, it was a sensational achievement. Only in 2022 did the U20 team return to Division A for the first time after a 15-year absence. In total, the team had played in Division A just six times and, of course, had never advanced beyond the EuroBasket quarterfinals.
On the other hand, this medal is the culmination of a process, the product of years of proper development in Israeli women’s basketball. Two years earlier, Gal Raviv and her teammates reached the European Championship semifinals with the girls’ national team and qualified for the World Cup. The senior women’s national team also completed two perfect EuroBasket qualifying campaigns over the past two summers.
Raviv finished as the tournament’s leading scorer, assist leader and top-ranked player by efficiency, including a huge 37-point performance against Poland in the quarterfinals, and there is not a single WNBA scout who has not marked her name down.
Yes, it ended with a loss to formidable France in the final, but the silver medal shone just like gold.
One of the greatest in the world, ever // Eliasaph Deuel
Artem Dolgopyat wins European title for third time
We have long since come to regard Artem Dolgopyat’s medals as a given. He is the most reliable rock in Israeli sports. The podium is the axiom. Any other result feels like a malfunction, a statistical deviation.
But in reality, a historic phenomenon is taking shape before our eyes, and it is anything but ordinary.
In his modest way, Dolgopyat is establishing himself as one of the greatest floor exercise gymnasts in history — not in Israel, in the world — and after the Los Angeles Olympics, he may even claim the title of greatest of them all.
Arten Dolgopyat is establishing himself as one of the greatest floor exercise gymnasts in history
(Photo: Denis Vakhrushev, courtesy of the Israel Gymnastics Association)
Romanian gymnast Marian Dragulescu was crowned world champion on floor four times, but never won Olympic gold. Dolgopyat did. Russia’s Nikolai Andrianov was a two-time Olympic champion on floor, but never won the world title in that event. Dolgopyat did.
Israel has had outstanding athletes before, but never an athlete with such a strong case for GOAT status. At least based on the record alone, another Olympic gold medal in two years would make Dolgopyat a legitimate candidate for that weighty title — the greatest floor gymnast of all time.
Dolgopyat missed the most recent World Championships in Indonesia for political reasons, but his European Championship victory a month ago offered proof to everyone that nothing has changed as far as he is concerned.
Instead of greeting his accomplishments with indifference because we have become accustomed to excellence, perhaps we should lift our eyes for a moment and look directly at the history being written before us, quietly and humbly.
An event bursting with meaning // Yair Kattan
Deni Avdija’s All-Star appearance
Between injuries and the complications of creating three balanced teams for the All-Star Game, the NBA wrestled with the problem in February and decided that, to even things out, Karl-Anthony Towns would move from one of the two U.S. teams to the World team. He is American of Dominican descent, and for him it did not really matter. Whatever flag works, I’m happy.
That is the difference between Avdija’s participation and the selection of others.
Many players are happy simply to be part of the occasion, for the exciting career milestone and the feeling that they belong to the elite of the sport. But that is only about them.
When Avdija played in the All-Star Game, the event was bursting with meaning. He was the representative of an entire country, of a great people swimming in an ocean of fans’ tears and fighting with an imaginary sword against the brutal intensity of hatred toward Israel and Jews.
Deni dunks at the All-Star Game
(Photo: Jae C. Hong/AP)
He did it with elegance and, at age 25, knew how to handle the emotional burden and the need, to a large extent, to become a face of the fight against antisemitism.
Enough with the pathos — in another moment you’ll be able to dip an apple into this text.
Strip away everything around it, and this was simply a phenomenal sporting achievement. Avdija deservedly found himself among the 24 best basketball players in the world, at a time of unprecedented depth and breadth of talent in the league.
He is an example of an elite athlete who improves every year, someone who played for two bad teams and, after the first did not want him to help it improve, took the second from nowhere into the playoffs.