Swimmer Ami Dadaon clinches another Paralympic gold as Israeli medal haul rises to 7
Athlete emotionally shouts along to anthem ‘with everything I had’; goalball team beats Canada to get spot in semifinal; tennis player Guy Sasson sent to bronze medal match after loss
Amy Spiro is a reporter and writer with The Times of Israel
Israeli swimmer Ami Dadaon won a gold medal on Tuesday at the 2024 Paris Paralympics, his third of the Games so far and his second gold.
Dadaon, 23, clinched the win in the men’s 200m freestyle S4 disability class with a time of 2:49.26, finishing more than three seconds ahead of silver medal winner Roman Zhadanov of Russia, who is competing as a neutral athlete due to the country’s Olympic ban.
Dadaon, who was born with cerebral palsy, holds the world record in the event of 2:44.84, which he set in Tokyo three years ago.
An emotional Dadaon shouted the Israeli anthem on the podium as “Hatikvah” played in the packed Paris La Defence Arena, pumping his fist in the air at the conclusion of the music.
“It never stops being less emotional, this was even more emotional than last time, every time to give hope (tikvah) to the Israeli people, every time to sing the anthem, every time to almost cry — or to cry,” Dadaon told Israel’s Sport5 broadcaster shortly after the medal ceremony.
“When I’m on the podium, I think about our nation and everything it is going through, and I know that if I can succeed in bringing a few moments of satisfaction, I’ve already done my part,” he added. Hearing the anthem, he said, “is this moment when all of your work comes into focus, all of your dreams. The anthem is the symbol of our country, my symbol, and therefore I shouted it with everything I had.”
This is Dadaon’s third medal so far in Paris, after he earlier won gold in the 100m freestyle and silver in the 150m individual medley. The swimmer wrapped up the Tokyo Games with three medals in total, but he could surpass that in Paris with one event to go — Friday’s 50m freestyle, in which he holds both the world record and the Paralympic record.
Overall, Israel has already racked up seven medals in Paris, including four gold medals; in Tokyo the Israeli delegation took home nine medals, its best finish since Athens 2004.
In addition to Dadaon’s three medals, fellow swimmer Mark Malyar won bronze in the 100m backstroke, rower Moran Samuel took gold in the women’s single sculls, duo Shahar Milfelder and Saleh Shahin clinched bronze in the mixed double sculls and taekwondo athlete Asaf Yasur won gold in the men’s under-58kg weight class.
Elsewhere in Paris on Tuesday, Israel had mixed results at the Paralympics, with a key win for the women’s goalball team and a loss in tennis that still keeps medal hopes alive.
The women’s goalball team beat Canada 5-1 in a quarterfinal match, advancing to the semifinal round, slated for Wednesday.
Israel will face a rematch against China in its semifinal game, after losing 1-6 to the team in an earlier round.
If the six-woman team can pull out a win in the semifinal, it will be guaranteed a silver or gold medal. If it loses, it will advance instead to the bronze medal match on Thursday.
Goalball is a team sport played by those with visual impairments, in which athletes throw and attempt to block a ball with bells embedded inside.
Meanwhile, tennis player Guy Sasson lost his semifinal match in the men’s quad singles to the Netherlands’ Sam Schroder, who is ranked first in the world.
Missing out on the final, Sasson will now instead compete in the bronze medal match on Thursday against Turkey’s Ahmet Kaplan.
Sasson, 44, lost to Schroder in the 2024 Australian Open, and then several months later beat him at the 2024 French Open to take his first major singles title. The tennis player was injured in a 2015 snowboarding accident that left him in a wheelchair.
