Swimmers ready to take the medal plunge
By Mark Schulman
Special to The Jerusalem Post
(September 15) - CANBERRA - "Faster, faster," yells Leonid Shaichet, as he looks at his stopwatch.
As soon as the Israeli Olympic swimming team arrived in Australia after a grueling 24 hour-plus plane ride, swimming coach Shaichet already had them in the pool doing laps and practicing their jump starts.
"Actually, our practices were relatively light up until the Games," says Yoav Bruck, 28, the team's most senior swimmer who will be competing in his third Olympics. Bruck was in Barcelona in 1992 and was a member of the Israeli 4x100m medley relay team which reached the Olympic final in Atlanta in 1996.
The swimming team had been sequestered in Canberra, Australia's capital, 300km. southwest of Sydney in order to practice in privacy. "We wanted to keep away from the hype and focus on training."
There are 40 Israelis competing in this year's Games. A quarter of the team are swimmers, who will be competing in numerous freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly events of varying lengths.
"I'm swimming well and ready to go," says Yoav Meiri, 25, who just broke the Israeli record in the 200m. butterfly at the European Championships in July in Helsinki. "I'm not nervous, just excited."
"This is the best group we've ever had," Bruck adds. "I am confident that at least three of our swimmers will make it to the finals."
Swimming has traditionally never been one of Israel's strongest sports, but in recent years it has developed, thanks to the wave of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
Alexei Manziula, 20, who will compete in the 4x100m freestyle, is one of those athletes. He made aliya from Russia two years ago after meeting Israeli coaches at a youth championship in Europe. In other events, Michael Kalganov and Alex Averbukh, both of the former Soviet Union, are favored to win medals in kayaking and pole vaulting, respectively.
Other immigrants include assistant swimming coaches Leonid Kaufman, Leonid Karsianski and Vladimir Sofer.
Shaichet came to Israel in 1991 from the former Soviet Union and has been coaching the national swimming team since 1993. He was the former head coach of the USSR's national youth swimming team, as well as a coach of the USSR Olympic team to Seoul in 1988. He is now at the forefront of revolutionizing the level and training methods of swimming in Israel.
"Compared to Russia, there are relatively few good swimmers in Israel," Shaichet said. "That is why we have to invest in each and every one of them."
Although the budget is not as much as he would like - especially compared to the amount invested in the Australian and American teams - it has improved greatly in past years. He pointed out that the building of a dormitory for swimmers at the Wingate Institute for Physical Education and Sport near Netanya in 1991 is one of the most important events that has benefited the sport.
"The dormitory at Wingate is an opportunity for swimmers to practice full-time at the country's best training facility," he said.
Some 3,000 academics, athletes and students pass daily through Wingate, an institute that serves as a training center for national teams, the Olympic team, and hosts international athletic conferences. A special elite sports division supervises the planning and execution of preparations for the Olympic Games and World Champion ships, as well as a center for the development of sport giftedness, which trains up-and-coming athletes.
When asked how the team will fare, Shaichet said he is a bit superstitious and wasn't making any predictions, but he said in a reassuring tone that "the team won't fail."
It's hard to fail when the team consists of Israel's best swimmers. The team has two women. At only 16 - the baby of the team - Vered Borochovsky will compete in the 100m. butterfly and 200m. individual medley. She placed eighth in the finals of the 100m. butterfly at the European Swimming Championships, with an Israeli record of 1:00.44 minutes.
Adi Bichman, 17, placed fifth at the same competition in the 800m. freestyle, with a new national record of 8:47.59. Considering their young age and talent, they are sure to compete in future Olympics.
The rest of the squad includes: Yoav Gat, 19, in the 200m. backstroke; Eitan Orbach, 23, in the 100m. backstroke, 4x100m. freestyle and 4x100m. medley; Micky Halika, 21, in the 200m. and 400m. individual medley; Tal Stricker, 21, in the 100m. and 200m. breastroke and 4x100m. medley; and Oren Azrad, 21, in the 4x100m. freestyle.
Although the team is far from home, Canberra has welcomed the athletes with open arms.
Their biggest fans so far have been Australian schoolchildren at a nearby elementary school who invited the team to spend a recent morning with them.
Since swimming is one of Australia's national sports, with the Australian Olympic team expected to rack up the medals, the school kids were happy to be in the presence of real Olympic athletes and were eager to ask questions in the way only kids know how.
"Why do you swim?," asked one young boy. "Because," answered Oren Azrad, who starting swimming a bit later than the rest of his teammates at the age of 12, "my parents wanted me to take up a sport that would tire me out at the end of the day. Ten years later, it's still tiring."
After teaching the kids about Israel, the swimmers handed out Israeli Olympic pins.
"This is really the best part of participating in the Olympics," Bruck said surrounded by a group of third graders. "It's the international spirit of friendship."
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