Guy Cohen had the honour of claiming Team GB’s first medal of the 19th Maccabiah Games when he won bronze in the men’s epee tournament in Jerusalem.

More fencing medals followed with a silver for GB juniors in the team sabre and a bronze in the foil, great efforts from Richard Bernstein, Joel Crowne and Leo Gundle, though Richard Cohen, the team manager and Guy’s father, was knocked out in round one of the men’s sabre.

Cohen, 24, was the only non-Israeli to stand on the podium at the end of his contest — highlighting the fact that many of the individual events were a training ground for Israeli athletes.

He said: “The last Israel fencer I fought was simply better than me and it was an up-and-down battle. Once he took the lead I could never really catch up and I responded too late.”

Cohen’s sister, Mary is in the quarter-finals of the epee, which she reached by beating the tournament’s No1 seed, who had knocked her out of the European Championships last year.

David Garcia & Aaron Miller won bronze in the Junior Boys badminton doubles while Garcia also took the Junior Boys’ Singles Plate.

And Team GB won two medals in the pool on Tuesday as Naomi Ayrton and Adam Warner won a bronze each in the mixed relay team in the women’s and men’s 4x200m freestyle relays respectively.