Israel Has Disqualified Its Own Olympic Bobsleigh Team After This Member Faked Being Sick To Swap With Another
Team members sought to swap out Zisman with substitute Israeli bobsled athlete Ward Fawarsy, who participated in an Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip in 2023.
Israel has disqualified its own bobsleigh team, which was already ranked in last place, at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics after one of its athletes lied to Olympic officials and faked an illness to swap with another teammate.
Israel competed on Saturday, Feb. 21, in the first two runs of the event with a team consisting of Adam Jeremy Edelman, Menachem Chen, Uri Zisman and Omer Katz.
Team members then sought to swap out Zisman with substitute Israeli bobsled athlete Ward Fawarsy, who participated in an Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip in 2023.
Substitutions in bobsled events, however, are only allowed if someone is injured or ill.
To circumvent the rules, Zisman claimed to be sick and signed a sworn medical affidavit, according to the New York Times.
On that basis, the Olympic Committee of Israel (OCI) formally submitted a substitution request to Games officials.
As of the morning of Sunday, Feb. 22, the team was still expected to compete according to the official schedule, but with Edelman, Chen, Fawarsy and Katz.
But later on Sunday, the OCI announced in a statement it is suspending its team from the competition after discovering Zisman had faked his illness to enable the unauthorized substitution for Fawarsy.
“A thorough review will be conducted when the team returns at the end of the Games. The decision on the immediate suspension was also made with the agreement of the athletes themselves,” the statement said. “The Olympic Committee of Israel views any deviation from the Olympic values as unacceptable and cannot accept inappropriate behavior.”
Edelman said in a post on X that given the fact the team was very unlikely to qualify for a fourth run, “it was more important to us that our alternate could have the opportunity to compete in the Olympics.”
Edelman is already at the center of a controversy after Swiss commentator called him out for labeling himself as a “ Zionist to the core,” calling Israel’s genocide in Gaza "the most morally just war in history" and supporting Fawarsy, who participated in Israel’s military operations in Gaza in 2023.
The commentator, Stefan Reina, went on to say that “one can therefore question” Edelman’s presence during the Games, since the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had said that athletes who have “actively supported the war by participating in pro-war events, and by being engaged militarily or through their activities on their social media, were not eligible to participate.”
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