Fate of Israel’s tiny Winter Olympics delegation on thin ice over bureaucratic hurdles

With just five weeks to go until the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina, Israel’s already small delegation is facing bureaucratic hurdles that could shrink its representation significantly.

International Olympic Committee regulations demand that all athletes must be citizens of and hold a passport from the country they represent. But a new regulation enacted in Israel in 2023 means that citizens who don’t spend most of their lives in the country will instead be granted a travel document known as a teudat ma’avar.

Athletes who compete at the highest level in winter sports are essentially unable to spend most of their time in Israel, since it lacks adequate facilities for training. And Israeli Olympic officials say the problem is exacerbated by the fact that there is no sitting interior minister in Israel, after Shas’s Moshe Arbel quit and the term of his temporary replacement, Yariv Levin, ended in October.

“This is a situation that I don’t think we’ve ever had before,” Yael Arad, the president of the Olympic Committee of Israel, told reporters in a Zoom press briefing on Wednesday. “We feel like our athletes are sort of held hostage” by the law.

Arad said the OCI has been “dealing with this for months” with the relevant government authorities, “asking, explaining, and — I don’t want to say — almost begging, yet we can’t manage to get a signature.”

A spokeswoman for the Population, Immigration and Border Authority told The Times of Israel on Wednesday that the passport issue “is not bureaucracy. It’s an issue that can only be approved by the minister, and there is no [interior] minister.”

To date, only four Israeli athletes have qualified for the upcoming games: figure skater Mariia Seniuk, cross-country skier Attila Mihaly Kertesz and downhill skiing siblings Barnabas and Noa Szollos, who both also competed for Israel in 2022.

Skeleton athlete Jared Firestone could still qualify for the games, as could the bobsleigh team headed by AJ Edelman, with additional qualifying races for both taking place in the coming weeks.

But at the moment, Seniuk – who was selected as Israel’s flag-bearer – Kertesz and Firestone all lack the Israeli passport in hand that will enable them to represent Israel in Milano Cortina when the games kick off on February 6, said Israeli Olympic officials.

Gili Lustig, the CEO of the OCI, said Wednesday that it sees great importance in sending a quality delegation to Milano Cortina, and that the issue of the passports is a “huge crisis.”

“During this period, we see the matter of having the Israeli flag raised with pride at the Olympic Games as the most important thing in the Olympic movement,” said Lustig.

“These are not athletes from whom we expect medals, but for there to be an Israeli flag at four different Olympic villages is something that during this period is important to all of us,” added Lustig, referring to efforts to bar and boycott Israel’s representatives, including its athletes, during two years of grueling war against Hamas in Gaza.

Israel, which has never won a Winter Olympics medal, sent just six athletes to the 2022 Games in Beijing, and 10 to the 2018 Olympics, its largest delegation to date. By contrast, Israel sent 88 athletes to the 2024 Paris Olympics and has won 20 Olympic medals in summer sports so far, including seven just last year.

And while Israel is likely to send just four or five athletes to the 2026 Olympics, that figure could double if its four-man bobsleigh team qualifies in races scheduled for the coming weeks.

But the team has seen a wrench thrown in its plans after the OCI demanded that only Israeli citizens be among those competing to qualify for a spot in the Olympics, after the team had used some non-citizens in a number of races.

Despite such a move being allowed by international Olympic regulations, Lustig said that “we believe that the minimum we need to maintain the fitting and required level is for at least those who achieve the criterion to be Israeli citizens.”

Lustig presented data to reporters showing that when the bobsleigh team, led by pilot Edelman, competed with only its Israeli citizen athletes, it performed worse than when competing with two Czech bobsleighers who had been working with the team.

“It’s inconceivable that we would allow athletes who are not Israeli to lead this team, this discipline,” said Arad. “I don’t see how that would help our culture of achievement… when we’re currently seeing that when the team is all Israelis, it finishes last.”

Arad said that the OCI believes that “everyone who makes enormous efforts — and we’re not belittling that, we know how hard it is — will ultimately get there if he or she is good enough. And if they’re not good enough, they’ll continue to work hard in order to reach the next games.”

David Greaves, the president of the Israeli Olympic Bobsleigh Skeleton Federation, asserted to The Times of Israel last week, however, that the full Israeli bobsleigh team was doing just as well in competition.

“The performance is the same, essentially the same,” he said. “Sometimes you have a bad day, sometimes you have a good day. Sometimes you crash and you’re disqualified. That’s why you race in like 10-11 races throughout the year, so you can take your best seven or eight.”

Moving forward with just the Israeli athletes, as the OCI has demanded, “we definitely see a path forward” for the team, said Greaves.

For Edelman – who competed at the 2018 Olympics for Israel as a skeleton athlete – “this has been a passion and a commitment to the sport and to the country for more than a decade,” he said.

“We’ve been doing everything we can to put a team on the ice to represent Israel, to be competitive, and AJ has shown himself to be one of the top drivers in the world,” said Greaves, noting that the bobsleigh team was not always able to compete throughout the season with all Israeli athletes, due to injuries as well as IDF reserve duty obligations.

“It’s really quite remarkable what [Edelman] has done and what he’s been able to achieve, despite all the challenges that he has had as captain of the team.”