After beginning gymnastics as a nine-year-old (“late”, she chuckled), the next decade of her life was consumed by preparation for her eventual glory.
She spent much of her adolescence at Israel’s renowned Wingate Institute, a large training facility located south of Netanya.
Tomer Seker, head of innovation at the institute, shared that Ofir, along with her teammates, would train there for more than ten hours per day in the lead-up to the 2024 Games.
Her mother, Yael, said she believes that “sport is a really, really important thing that a child needs to do, because it's discipline, it's so many things”.
She explained that it is “quite an achievement” for her daughter to begin “late” and yet still reach the heights which she did, adding that “we were [always] catching up with her, driving with her to every competition – all the way to Paris”.
“But it's not always smiling and happy with medals,” Yael continued. “It's a lot of crying and hugging and listening and crying again, getting shouted at, and getting up again.
“This is why sport is so important. You fall down, you have to get up.”
Ofir smiled, agreeing with her mother, clearly aware of the sacrifices made by her family to help her succeed.
“After every competition, when I got a medal, I put it on, then I gave it to my mother. We had a little ceremony.”
Now, in her early 20s – and having won her Olympic silver at just 19 years old – Ofir is retired from gymnastics and in higher education, owing to the unparalleled intensity of a career in the sport.
Ofir Shaham on stage with Tomer Seker during the sports tech expo hosted by Colosseum Sport this month at Expo Tel Aviv (photo: Ben Conway)[Missing Credit]
She spoke to the JC at the Sports Innovation Expo hosted by pioneering Israeli sports tech company Colosseum Sport, and said that her discipline is far behind others in terms of its integration of technology to help coaches and athletes.
“The only thing we had in our hall, it's a camera, with a red button on the wall,” Ofir recounted. “When the coach wants [the footage] to be cut as a clip, she presses the red button, and it cuts to two minutes before she pressed it.
“It is cool, but the technology is like… a video that you can move the angles and get a close up of – it's not a technology like I studied in my [university] course about innovation.”
Perhaps, working at the intersection of sports tech and gymnastics will be Ofir’s calling for her ‘second career’, as retired athletes often say.
“I think that now I am the one who can connect between my sport and sport tech, because still no one does it.”
