I had a short, but informative, conversation with the pilot of the Israeli Bobsleigh Team today. He’s also the skeleton athlete that represented them at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
He shared an article to Reddit about the Israeli team’s goals for the next couple of years. They’re aiming for 4-man qualification at Beijing 2022, and then for a medal in 2026. Apparently the federation has found a strong sponsor that is willing to support them. It sounds like he (and others) are trying to organize Israel into a legitimate and competitive sliding program.
He also gave me a little bit of backstory on himself. He learned to slide through YouTube. I feel like I learn about more and more athletes who learned their sports through YouTube. Definitely one of the positive sides of social media and technology is that sports of have become more accessible for athletes around the world.
He also told me a little about the 4-man team. The team has quite a unique ethnic, religious, and sexuality makeup. The pilot (AJ) is a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and is member of the Jewish faith. His crew are all Druze Arabs.
I just thought that was interesting enough to share on here.