The first-ever Israeli Olympic bobsled team had equipment, passports, and thousands of dollars of items stolen after the apartment where they were staying while training was robbed, the team revealed Saturday.
“While training for the Olympics, the @israelbobsled apartment was broken into during their training, and thousands of dollars of stuff and passports were stolen. What a season…” team captain and driver AJ Edelman posted on his X account, along with a photo of what appears to be investigators on the scene.
The team was reportedly training in the Czech Republic before they traveled to Italy, where official bobsled training starts Thursday at the Cortina Sliding Center in the co-hosting ski resort town of Cortina d’Ampezzo, approximately 105 miles northeast of Milan, for the 2026 Winter Games.
Edelman, along with teammates Menachem Chen, Ward Fawarseh, Omer Katz, and alternate Uri Zisman, is the first-ever Israeli bobsled team to compete in the Olympics. In addition, Edelman is believed to be the first Orthodox Jew to ever compete in the Winter Games, while Farwaseh is expected to be the first-ever Druze Olympian. The Druze people, an ethno-religious group with deep ties to Israel, who primarily live in Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, have suffered human rights violations at the hands of Islamic extremists in Syria.
The Israeli team has had its share of obstacles in its journey to the 2026 Olympic Games. Several members of Edelman’s original team were recruited to fight in Gaza after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, which put Edelman in the position of building a team and finding funding “in a country where a large percentage of its population has never seen snow.”
“In a country where a large percentage of its population has never seen snow, curating a team willing to commit years of their life for bobsled was difficult,” the New York Post explained in 2024.
“Most Israelis don’t even know there is a winter Olympics,” Edelman told the Post.
The team got their chance after Britain decided to send one bobsled team instead of two to the Games.
Now, this group of “unlikely ambassadors” from Israel — a pole-vaulter, sprinter, shot-putter, rugby player, and former Olympian in skeleton — is determined to win the gold in 2026, and has been compared to the famous 1988 Jamaican Olympic bobsled team, who similarly persevered through many challenges to compete on the world stage.
As the AP reported, Edelman “puts his own spin on the 1993 movie ‘Cool Runnings,’ based somewhat on the Jamaican bobsled team’s Olympic team from 1988. Using the Yiddish word for synagogue, he says he is thinking of this one as ‘Shul Runnings.’”
After the robbery, the team seems to be in good spirits, which team captain Edelman attributes to the “Israeli Spirit.”
“Suitcases, shoes, equipment, passports stolen, and the boys headed right back to training today,” Edelman explained in his post. “I really believe this team exemplifies the Israeli Spirit.”
As athletes from around the world prepare to compete for the gold, climate activists have already begun protesting “against the ‘unsustainable’ use of wood to construct the bobsleigh track,” in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Breitbart News reported.
The full 2026 Olympic bobsled competition schedule can be found here.
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