YIR: Jewish Athletes Shine at Paris Olympics

It may take years, even decades, to fully appreciate the spectacular feats accomplished by Jewish and Israeli Olympians in the 2024 Paris Games. It was an Olympics in which Jewish athletes from the United States, Israel, and Australia earned 18 medals (six golds, seven silvers, five bronzes). Only 15 other nations took home more hardware from this year’s Summer Olympics.

For Israel in particular, the 2024 Paris Games goes down in the record books as the country’s most glorious Olympics: its grand total of seven medals (three of which were earned on a single day, Aug. 3) represented a high watermark in Israeli Olympic history.

Making her Olympic debut, U.S. wrestler Amit Elor, 20, didn’t just win a gold medal in the women’s 68-kilogram weight class division. When she knocked off Kyrgyzstan’s Meerim Zhumanazarova 3-0 in the final at Arena Champ-de-Mars earlier this month, Elor became the all-time youngest U.S. gold medalist in wrestling, male or female, and continued a remarkable personal streak of not having dropped a single match, at any weight class, since the Under-17 World Championships in 2019.

Get The AJT Newsletter by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

Unlike the narrative surrounding Elor, the Israel Olympic Committee harbored no such lofty expectations for Israeli windsurfer Tom Reuveny. Yet the 24-year-old Rosh Ha’Ayin native ended up earning a gold medal in the men’s windsurfing iQFoil event, which by his estimation, was the first time he had won a competition since the World Youth Championship in 2017.

The gold medal-winning U.S. women’s foil team had a vibrant Jewish presence as Jackie Dubrovich and Maia Weintraub comprised half of this year’s squad. After reaching the semifinals in the last five world championships and getting silver in the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, the United States women’s foil fencers won the program’s first-ever Olympic gold in Paris by beating Italy, 45-39, on Aug. 1.