Cool Runnings: Israeli bobsleigh team clinch first-ever Winter Olympics spot

"The Israeli Bobsled Team is now ‘The Israeli Olympic Bobsled Team.’ We are headed to Milan.

"[Thank you all for] being a part of this journey… let’s go make more history.”

The Olympic Committee of Israel called it a “historic achievement”.

The qualification effectively doubles the Israeli delegation to the game, with nine athletes from the Jewish state now slated to compete in Italy next month.

Alongside Edelman, Menachem Chen, Ward Fawarseh and Omer Katz will take on the bobsleigh, with Uri Zisman travelling as an alternate.

Elsewhere, siblings Noa and Barnabos Szollos will compete in the alpine skiing event, Mariia Seniuk will vie for a figure skating title, Attila Mihaly Kertesz will go for gold in cross-country skiing and Jared Firestone will look to conquer the skeleton.

The bobsleighers’ remarkable story has drawn comparison to the plot of the 1993 comedy Cool Runnings, which follows a Jamaican bobsleigh team trying to qualify for the 1988 Games.

But the Israelis were additionally hampered by an edict from their own Olympic board declaring that they could not use non-Israelis for qualifying races, despite the practice being permitted under international rules.

David Greaves, the president of the Israeli Olympic Bobsleigh Skeleton Federation, told the Times of Israel: “This has been a 24-year journey for me, from when we established the first bobsled team in 2002.
”That’s a huge sense of pride. To know that we’re contributing in a significant way to the delegation at these Olympic Games is very, very exciting.

"At the Olympic Games, with all the eyes from around the world, to see the Israeli flag flying now at the bobsled and skeleton track is something that will be forever meaningful to all of us.”