The Israeli bobsled team’s road to the Winter Olympics in Milan has been as twisting and winding as the Eugenio Monti Sliding Centre course in Cortina that will take sleighers hurtling down a mountain in the Italian Dolomites. 

The four-man team is part of a small group of Israeli winter athletes who have been training hard to qualify to compete at the highest level, but they have faced additional challenges on their road to the elite competition. In contrast to their fellow competitors, most of the Israeli bobsled team has been serving in IDF reserve duty during the Gaza war, missing key training days and competitions. The team has also faced obstacles from the Israeli Olympic Committee. 

Now, despite it all, the athletes are likely to qualify for the Milan games, which begin on Feb. 6.

Israeli bobsled team pilot Adam “AJ” Edelman, 34, grew up in an Orthodox family in Brookline, Mass.; his older brother is Emmy-winning comedian Alex Edelman. 

Playing competitive winter sports since preschool, Edelman made aliyah in 2016 and represented Israel in skeleton in the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games. After that, he set a goal to bring the first Israeli bobsled team to the Olympics. After failing to qualify for the 2022 games, Edelman led a two-man team to third place in the North American championship in 2023.

On Sunday, the four-man Israeli team finished fifth in the North American Cup at Lake Placid, N.Y., likely clinching a spot in Milan.

“Bobsled Olympic qualification is very different from all other sports,” Edelman explained to Jewish Insider. “In no other sport that we know of can you rank better than someone and your country is not represented.”

Some of the leading countries in bobsledding, such as Germany, Switzerland and the U.S., have more than one team, and the rules stipulate that up to three of a country’s teams can be on the 28-team Winter Olympic roster based on the points earned by its top-scoring team. Therefore, Edelman explained, teams ranked lower than Israel could end up qualifying and Team Israel would stay home: “Israel ranked better than three other teams [going to the Olympics from] Australia, China and Latvia, but because Israel has only one good team, we are knocked out of the spot.”

However, Edelman was confident that Israel would receive a second-round invitation to the Winter Games next week, saying, “If a country doesn’t send all of its sleds, because Israel is ranked so high, we will be offered that invitation.”

In the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s race, the team faced an additional challenge: The Israeli Olympic Committee instituted a policy last summer that it would not accept second-round invitations. 

However, the committee decided on Thursday to make an exception for the bobsled team.

“After in-depth professional analysis, the Olympic Committee and International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation’s professional estimation is that the team may place in the top 20 in the four-man team competition in the Winter Olympic Games next month,” the Israeli Olympic Committee said in a statement.

As such, the committee said, it would accept an invitation for the bobsled team should one of the other countries’ teams choose not to compete and the IBSF extends it to Israel, which would happen early next week. 

Gili Lustig, the Israeli Olympic Committee’s director-general, said that “the bobsledding team led by AJ Edelman made impressive progress in recent weeks … We are proud of the Olympic delegation and the athletes who are waiting expectantly for the Israeli flag to wave in Milano and for our athletes to appear and succeed.”

Edelman called the Committee’s decision “a beautiful recognition of the skill level of the team. If we get the opportunity to represent the state we are excited to start a tradition of Israeli Bobsled in the Olympics for many years to come. The infrastructure is built. We want to leave it in good hands.”

Edelman said that an Israeli bobsled team would stand out and be remembered, “a legacy performance.”

“It’s like the actual talented version of ‘Cool Runnings,’” he said, referring to the John Candy film about an unlikely Jamaican bobsled team competing in the 1988 Olympics.

David Wiseman, a sports commentator who runs the “Follow Team Israel” page on Facebook, noted that the Winter Olympic Games are a staid affair for Israelis, where there are very limited facilities for winter sports and the athletes mostly train in Europe. 

“No one cares about them now, but don’t tell me that when they’re at the opening ceremony waving the flags they won’t be on the front page of the newspapers [in Israel],” Wiseman argued. “People get a kick out of seeing Israel compete. This isn’t about medals, it’s about sport in its purest form, and that’s great.”

Israel is expected to have four to seven athletes compete in Milan, Wiseman said. The ones certain to be going are Maria Seniuk, a figure skater, who will be Israel’s flag-bearer at the opening ceremony; Attila Mihaly Kertesz, a 37-year-old Hungarian-born veterinarian competing in cross-country skiing; a brother and sister, Benjamin and Noa Szollos, competing in alpine skiing; and Jared Firestone in skeleton.

Edelman recruited his teammates by reaching out to other Israeli athletes on Instagram, and through word of mouth in the Israeli athletic community. They are Ward Fawarseh, a Druze athlete on Israel’s national rugby team; Uri Zissman, a pole vaulter; Omer Katz, a springer; and Itamar Sprinz, an Israeli CrossFit champion. 

“Bobsled pilots are supposed to just pilot and go home, but Israel doesn’t have a team infrastructure,” Edelman said. “During the off-season, most of my time was dedicated to trying to find funds … and trying to find people to be on the team.”

In 2022, the Israeli bobsled team “was a spot short” of getting into the Olympics, Edelman recalled. “So I held on, which is what you do when you come 0.1 seconds away from your dream.”

The team was supposed to begin training in Lake Placid on Oct. 13, 2023, but six days earlier, after Hamas attacked southern Israel, all of the team’s members, except Edelman, were called up for IDF reserve duty.

“Over the past two years, I have been flying people back and forth from Israel for a week [at a time] to learn the sport,” he said. “The team did remarkably well in that time, finishing third overall in North America in its first season, and fourth in the next season.” 

Ahead of the 2025-2026 season, Edelman brought in spares out of concern that his regular team would have to return to the IDF again, and the spares had to participate in some of the competitions to qualify. 

Menachem Chen, Israel’s shot put and discus throw champion — who was only available when he had time off from Arkansas State University, where he’s on the track and athletics team — rejoined the bobsled team last month, after having been part of its 2022 Olympic bid.

But before Chen, Edelman hired pro-Israel Czech retired athletes to act as spares, which set off a “firestorm,” the bobsled pilot recounted.

“People took a look and said ‘they’re not quite Israelis.’ It was all nonsense. … There was not a single race in which the spares pushed [the bobsled to start the descent] better than the Israelis,” Edelman said, presenting data from recent races to back up his argument.

Since Oct. 7, Edelman has also made a name for himself in pro-Israel advocacy.

Days after the attacks, wearing his Israeli bobsledding uniform, Edelman set up a table in Washington Square Park in New York, and later in other public areas, with a table bearing a sign that said “Hamas is a terrorist group that butchers innocent civilians while Israel is a force for good. Change my mind.” 

One of the people who argued with Edelman in October 2023 was Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia anti-Israel encampment ringleader who is facing deportation.

“It was pretty simple for me,” Edelman said. “All of my guys were called to the war. I never had the honor of serving; I moved to Israel too late. I thought, if all of them are fighting, what can I do to contribute? Because I felt quite useless. The best way I know how is to go and fight rhetorically.”