An Israeli bobsled pilot says the apartment that he and some fellow Olympians have been using while finishing their training for the Milan Cortina Winter Games was robbed Saturday.
Among the missing items were passports and ‘thousands of dollars’ worth of other sporting equipment.
Some members of the team are yet to arrive in Italy and aren’t expected to leave their training base — the location of which the team did not disclose — until this coming week.
AJ Edelman, a former Olympic skeleton athlete who is now the driver for the Israeli bobsled team, said in a series of social media posts that the squad continued training Saturday even after police opened an investigation.
Edelman said the way in which the team handled the day ‘is just such a fine example of how we push forward in difficult circumstances,’.
He added on X: ‘Such a gross violation — suitcases, shoes, equipment, passports stolen, and the boys headed right back to training today. I really believe this team exemplifies the Israeli Spirit.’
Israel is competing in bobsled at the Olympics for the first time, qualifying for the games after Britain decided not to take one of its two allocated spots. Israel was next in line and accepted the offer to compete when the last Olympic slots opened.
Edelman told AP he was in Italy, not at the site of the robbery. He said team coach Itamar Shprinz, an Israeli cross-fit athlete, was there.
Israel plans to compete at the Olympics in both two- and four-man, with Edelman driving both sleds. He’s expected to be pushed by Menachem Chen in the two-man race, with Ward Fawarseh and Omer Katz listed as the athletes joining him for four-man.
Official bobsled training in Cortina d’Ampezzo begins on Thursday.
Edelman, who raced in the head-first sliding sport of skeleton at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, is believed to be the first Orthodox Jew to ever compete in a Winter Games. Farwaseh will likely to be the first Druze Olympian.
Their Olympic participation comes at a time when Israel’s presence in international sports has been met with a backlash over the humanitarian toll of the war in Gaza.
The Games officially got underway on Friday evening amid obvious political tension during the opening ceremony.
Italian President Sergio Mattarella formally declared the Games open at the main event in Milan’s San Siro stadium.
US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were among the crowd in the iconic football stadium for the performance entitled ‘Armonia’ (Harmony) that lasted three and a half hours.
Vance, who has been strongly critical of Europe, drew jeers in the stadium when an image of him waving the US flag appeared on a big screen.
The announcement of the Israeli team prompted some booing over the loud soundtrack, but there were cheers in Cortina.