After losing final in Paris, Israeli judoka says she’s sad not to take home gold

Minutes after winning a silver medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Raz Hershko says she is sad not to take home gold, but proud of her achievements.

“It’s a bummer it wasn’t an Olympic gold, that was the goal,” Hershko tells Israel’s Sport5 broadcaster. “I’m not sure what I’m crying over more, that I lost or that I have a medal.”

Hershko says that she is “really happy and emotional — I’m speechless.”

The judoka says that since Tokyo, when she went home without an individual medal after losing in the round of 16, “I didn’t rest, I went back to compete, to train — all to come and to do my best on the biggest stage, and to fix what happened in Tokyo.”

She says, “I so wanted the gold, I felt like it was my day, like I was there, that I was sharp, that I could make history in judo,” although she ultimately ended up with silver and “a small sense of missing out… but I’m happy.”

Hershko thanks her coach, Shanny Hershko — who is also her uncle — joking that “I can very objectively say that he’s the best coach in the world.”