Latest news with #Pyeongchang
Fox News
28-05-2025
- General
- Fox News
American-born Team Israel Olympian praises Trump's fight vs antisemitism, but won't play for Team USA
Team Israel Olympic bobsledder Adam Edelman is looking to lead his team back to the Winter Games for the first time since Pyeongchang in 2018. If they qualify for Cortina-Milan next year, it would mark his and his teammates' return to the Olympics after failing to qualify for Beijing in 2022. It would also mark their first trip back to the Winter Games since their country was attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. "We were blessed to have a team ready to go on October 7 and when October 7 came, when it was perpetrated on Israel, every one of them had to be called to war. So it really changed the dynamic of the team over the last couple years," Edelman told Fox News Digital. "The goal of the team after October 7 was to exist." Edelman recalled his team adjusting to a new starter in every competition it participated in, for a time. All the while, he has had to live below the poverty line in order to maintain his commitment to leading the team for the last 12 years. He even says he had to sell all of his bitcoin, which he says would have been worth millions today if he held onto it. "It was all spent on bobsledding," he said. "I'd be a mega-millionaire if I still had it." Edelman admits could have made things much easier for himself if he, a Massachusetts native and MIT grad, competed for Team USA instead of Israel. In a sport that is so resource-dependent like bobsledding, nicknamed F1 on ice due to its hefty costs to be competitive, Edelman knows he would have had access to more resources for coaching, training, equipment and marketing. However, for him, that would have defeated the point of competing as an Olympian at all. "I don't add anything to the United States. If I were to join the United States, the only value that would have been added is to my own journey, but it makes my journey non-additive to other people's journeys," Edelman said. "My value to the world, and why God put me on this Earth, I genuinely feel is to use the skills that he gave me to impact others positively… so I'm solely motivated to represent Israel. I've thought about this a lot." Still, Edelman is a proud American and believes that the U.S. is "the greatest country to ever exist in the history of mankind." Additionally, as a Jewish American, Edelman has also taken pride in seeing President Donald Trump crack down on the wave of antisemitism that has erupted in the aftermath of Oct. 7. Edelman said he saw the antisemitism up-close when he went to Columbia during its pro-Palestinian protests in 2024. Trump's administration has frozen billions of dollars to Ivy League universities Columbia and Harvard, declaring the schools violated Jewish students' civil rights by enabling antisemitic campus protests amid the Israel-Gaza conflict over the last year and a half. The president has even launched a specialized Justice Department task force fronted by Leo Terrell to tackle the issue. "The appropriateness of what the Trump administration has asked for is just enforcing the law. It's just saying 'hey, these people are protected under the civil rights act' and you're blatantly not enforcing the civil rights act. If people take over, trespass, assault security guards on your campus, harass Jews on the way to class, set up Jew-free zones, you wouldn't tolerate that for another group," Edelman said. The Trump administration also announced earlier in April that it would halt more than $1 billion in funding for Cornell University and approximately $790 million for Northwestern University amid investigations into alleged civil rights violations. Roughly $510 million in funds for Brown University could also be on the chopping block, a White House official told The Associated Press April 3, due to allegations of antisemitism at the school. "I think the way that the Trump administration has approached many issues since he came to office is exactly the right way," Edelman said. "Some policies are good, some policies are bad, and this is an inexplicably good policy. Make sure that American institutions of higher education do not continue this pathway to being so inaccessible to Americans, but also indoctrination centers of anti-American values." As Edelman looks to push his team back to the Winter Olympics in Cortina Milan in 2026, he aspires to be a voice for Americans and Jews in a complicated time in history. He hopes the rest of the story can appreciate the underdog story that he and his teammates are sledding through. Follow Fox News Digital's sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
Reuters
07-02-2025
- Sport
- Reuters
Italian job beckons for Aussie snowboarder Guseli
MELBOURNE, Feb 7 (Reuters) - With big hair and big air, rising Australian snowboarder Valentino Guseli will aim to stick the landing on top of the podium at the 2026 Winter Games and give a shout-out to family in fluent Italian. Guseli is eyeing his second Olympics at Milano-Cortina after finishing sixth in the halfpipe final at Beijing as a 16-year-old wunderkind. Even with no fans and hardcore COVID-19 restrictions, Beijing was a blast for Guseli as he upstaged seasoned rivals and watched his Australian idol Scotty James take the halfpipe silver four years after his Pyeongchang bronze. Milano-Cortina, however, promises to be on another level for Guseli, who is Italian on his father's side and loves the country. "I'm looking forward to it. I spent a lot of time training over there when I was younger," Guseli told Reuters in Melbourne. "I did my first triple jump there. Super good food, super nice people." Guseli has been working on his Italian with the help of his grandparents who live near the family home in Dalmeny, a beach town on the South Coast of New South Wales state. He has time on his hands to master the language while recovering from a serious knee injury. He hurt himself in a fall during qualifying at the Shougang Big Air event in China last December and posted on social media: "ACL gone. Seeyas in a bit." It can take a year to recover from ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) injuries, a timeline which would leave Guseli scrambling to be ready for the men's big air, the first snowboarding event, that starts a day before the Games' opening ceremony on February 6. Guseli hopes to qualify in the triad of snowboarding freestyle disciplines - halfpipe, slopestyle and big air - but will make a final decision on his Olympic programme later. In the meantime, he is taking rehab in his stride. "I've been through enough rehabs and I don't really find them that challenging," said Guseli. "You just focus on doing the right things and hopefully I'll be back shredding again as soon as possible." BREAKING RECORDS Broken bones and snapped ligaments go hand-in-hand with freestyle snowboarding as professional athletes pull off absurdly complex tricks to maximise points in competition. Guseli began learning tricks at a tender age on a home-made, 10-metre ramp that his dad built on their property. He later trained under a specialist freestyle coach in the United States. On the day before his 16th birthday, he stunned the snowboarding world by crushing American icon Shaun White's 11-year-old world record for the highest air out of a halfpipe with a 7.30-metre launch at the Laax resort in Switzerland. He broke another longstanding world record last April when he flew to a height of 11.50 metres off a hip jump in the same country. Unmistakeable with his big mop of curly hair, Guseli has been racking up trophies since the 2022 Beijing Games, claiming World Cup wins and a halfpipe silver medal at the 2023 World Championships in Georgia. A month before Georgia, he became the first snowboarder to claim World Cup medals in all three park and pipe disciplines in the same season. "Since the Olympics, it's all been on the up," said Guseli. "I've got a few wins under my belt, learned a lot and got some experience over the years. "Now I'm just looking forward to getting back on my board, getting to the Olympics and conquering."
