Take a dreamer who imagines building a Mediterranean team for the Winter Olympics, add a rugby player who can do flips, throw in three athletes who gave up on their disciplines and put them all into a bobsled. That is roughly how the story of Israel’s bobsled team begins — a team that has qualified for the Milan-Cortina Winter Games and will make its debut on the icy track in Italy on Feb. 21.
The driving force behind the Israeli team is Adam (AJ) Edelman, 34, the man with the vision who endured no shortage of jokes and smirks when he set out on his journey. you could call him the Theodor Herzl of the project. The famous balcony in Basel is replaced by a bomb shelter and, instead of 1902, it is the summer of 2006.
Edelman, then a teenager was visiting Israel when he was caught up in the Second Lebanon War, an experience that left a deep mark on him. The sirens and the dashes to shelters were seared into his memory, and he realized he had to give something back to the country that, in his words, “saved my life.” He also knew it would be through sports. “I still remember that moment in the shelter during the war — it was life-changing for me.”
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