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Team Israel Olympic Bob Leder Adam Edelman is looking to bring his team back to the winter matches for the first time since Pyeongchang in 2018.
If they qualify for Cortina-Milan next year, it would mark his and his teammates’ return to the Olympics after not qualifying for Beijing in 2022. It would also mark their first trip back to the winter games since their country was attacked by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
“We were blessed to have a team ready to go on October 7, and when October 7 came when it was committed on Israel, each of them had to be called for war. So it really changed the dynamics of the team for the last few years,” Edelman told Pakinomist Digital.
“The goal of the team after October 7 was to exist.”
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Israeli Adam Edelman brakes at the end of the Lord’s skeletal heat 2 during Pyeongchang 2018 Winter -Olympic Games, at the Olympic sliding center on February 15, 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea. (Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images)
Edelman remembered his team adapted to a new starter in any competition it participated in for a time.
All the time, he has had to live below the poverty line to maintain his commitment to leading the team for the past 12 years. He even says he had to sell all his bitcoin, which he says would have been worth millions today if he held on to it.
“It was all spent on bobson,” he said. “I would be a mega millionaire if I still had it.”
Edelman admits could have made things much easier for themselves if he, a Massachusetts -Indborn and my degree, competed for Team USA instead of Israel.
In a sport that is as resource -dependent as Bobsledding, called F1 on ICE due to its fierce costs of being competitive, Edelman knows that he would have had access to more resources for coaching, training, equipment and marketing.
But for him it would have defeated the point of competing as an Olympian at all.
“I am not adding anything to the US. If I had to join the US, the only value that would have been added is for my own journey, but it makes my journey non-additive for other people’s travels,” Edelman said.
“My value for the world, and why God put me on this earth, I really feel to use the skills that he gave me to influence others positively … so I am exclusively motivated to represent Israel. I have thought a lot about this.”
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Adam Edelman of Israel responds in the finish area during the Lord’s skeleton at the Olympic Shooting Center on February 16, 2018 in Pyeongchang-Gun, South Korea. (Matthias Hangst/Getty Images)
Still, Edelman is a proud American and believes the United States is “the largest country ever exist in the history of humanity.”
As a Jewish American, Edelman has also been proud to see President Donald Trump struck the wave of anti -Semitism erupted in the wake of October 7. Edelman said he looked up anti-Semitism when he went to Columbia during its pro-Salestinian protests in 2024.
Trump’s administration has frozen billions of dollars to Ivy League universities Columbia and Harvard, declaring that schools violated Jewish students’ civil rights by enabling anti-Semitic campus protests in the midst of the Israel-Gaza conflict for the past year and a half.
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The president has even launched a specialized Ministry of Justice’s Task Force, which is fronted by Leo Terrell to tackle the question.
“The ability of what the Trump administration has asked is just to enforce the law. Just say ‘Hello, these people are protected under the Civil Rights Act’ and you are obviously not to enforce the civil rights law. If people take over, you do not violate another group on your campus, to harass Jews on the way to the class, created Jew-free zones, you would not tolerate it for another group,” said Edelman.
The Trump administration also announced earlier in April that it would stop more than $ 1 billion in funding for Cornell University and approx. $ 790 million for the northwestern university in the midst of investigations of alleged violations of civil rights.
About $ 510 million in funds for Brown University could also be on the notch, a White House official told Associated Press April 3 due to allegations of anti -Semitism at school.
“I think the way the Trump administration has approached many questions since he came to office is exactly the right way,” Edelman said.
Israel’s Adam Edelman takes off his helmet after a training session for the gentlemen’s skeleton during Pyeongchang 2018 Winter -Olympic Games, at the Olympic Gliding Center on February 14, 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea. (MOHD RASFAN/AFP via Getty Images)
“Some policies are good, some policies are bad, and this is an inexplicably good policy. Make sure US institutions of higher education do not continue this way to be so inaccessible to Americans, but also indoctrination centers for anti-American values.”
As Edelman seems to push his team back to winter -ol in Cortina Milan in 2026, he hopes to be a voice for Americans and Jews at a complicated time in history.
He hopes the rest of the story can appreciate the underdog story that he and his teammates are sliding through.
