With a little more than six weeks until the start of the 2024 Olympics, Israel is working around the clock to ensure that the athletes competing at the games in Paris are able to keep their focus entirely on sport, amid a unique set of challenges and security concerns. “What we want from our athletes and our team members is focus, the mental focus of our athletes and coaches” without the outside pressure of security worries and anti-Israel provocations, Yael Arad, president of the Olympic Committee of Israel, told reporters in a press conference at OCI headquarters in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. “At the end of the day, we want our athletes to come and work, to compete,” said Arad, while noting the complex situation at home as well as the heightened desire, this year more than ever, “to go and represent Israel and to show the beautiful face of Israel.
” Arad, herself a former Olympic judoka who won Israel’s first-ever medal at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, noted that for months “we thought that by the time we got to the Olympics, the hostages [captured by Hamas on October 7] would have all returned home.” But the complicated ongoing situation at home also gives the athletes “a lot of strength to represent the people of Israel and the Jewish people.” The OCI has set impressive goals for its appearance at the 2024 Games, with officials saying they expect to bring home four or five medals and for its athletes to qualify for 15-18 finals.
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