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Olympic Medal

A day after Artem Dolgopyat moved an entire country when he became
an Olympic champion, we returned this morning to where it all began -
the gym in Hadar Yosef, the same gym he’s been coming to every
morning since he was twelve years old. Who knows, maybe this is where
the next champion will come from. While this sport is one of the core
disciplines of the Olympics, most of us did not really know it, but since
yesterday the interest seems to be growing. One of the other frameworks
that the excelling children reach on the way to the summit is the Wingate
Institute. But not everything here is rosy, the underdeveloped sports
culture in Israel makes it very difficult for professional athletes.
Dolgopyat himself used to ride buses to get to training, and even today he
earns a fairly low salary and trains in facilities at a level that is not at all
suitable for an Olympic champion. The gymnastics industry hopes that
Dolgopyat’s historic medal will do what Yael Arad and Arik Ze’evi did
for Judo and that one of the children here, who look up to Artem, will one
day be on the podium themselves.

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