World-Class Performances at 15th Maccabiah

by Simon Griver

A record-breaking 5,500 sportsmen and sportswomen from Jewish communities all over the world took part this year in the 15th Maccabiah. The participants, who came to the Jewish Olympics from 54 countries, competed in over 50 different sports.

Tragically, the festive opening ceremony was marred by the collapse of a bridge built for the event, an accident which claimed the lives of four of the Australian participants. But as the 380-strong Australian delegation voted to stay on and compete, the games proceeded following a 24-hour mourning period, despite the pall cast on all by the tragedy.

The Maccabi games are held in Israel every four years, and constitute the world's third largest sporting event, after the Olympics and the World Student Games. The Maccabiah is also the largest regular Jewish event of any kind worldwide, and the games have at times taken on a greater significance in the context of Jewish history. After the second Maccabiah in 1935, many participants stayed in the country, then under the British Mandate, preferring not to return to a Europe threatened by Hitler. The 14th Maccabiah in 1993, held after the fall of the communist regime, evoked emotions far beyond the thrill of the sports as competitors from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union were at last able to compete freely.

Israel finished first in this year's games, with 118 gold medals, followed by the United States with 44, South Africa with 16, Canada with nine, Britain with five and Russia with four. "But the Maccabiah is not an event in which participants are divided by success and failure," stresses Michael Kevehazi, chairman of the World Maccabi Union. "It is essentially an amateur event, in the best, old-fashioned sense of the word. Sporting prowess and the spirit of competing for the sake of competing are uppermost, and winning is not everything."

Nevertheless, there were some world-class performances. In the high jump, the gold was taken by Israel's Konstantin Matusevich, with an impressive leap of 2.26 meters. Matusevich's personal record of 2.3 5 meters is the second best jump of anybody worldwide this year.

In soccer, Brazil's gold-medal-winning Maccabiah team included Marcelo Lipatin, a 20-year-old rising star striker who is presently with the French club Paris St. Germain. The team, who beat Sweden 2-0 in the final, was coached by Carlos Gallo, who was a goalkeeper in Brazil's world cup squads in 1982 and 1986.

In ice hockey, the Canadian gold medal squad included eight professional members, including David Nemirovsky of the Florida Panthers. In swimming, the Israeli 4 x 100 meters men's medley team, who reached the final of the Atlanta Olympics last year, broke its own record with a swim of 3:25.79.

In basketball, two of the US bronze-medal-winning team stayed on in Israel after the Maccabiah, and signed up with two of the country's top teams - Brian Yankolowitz with Israeli champions and former European Cup holders, Maccabi Tel Aviv, and Jesse Rosenfeld with Israel's Cup holders, Hapoel Jerusalem.

The most famous participant in the Maccabiah was the American gymnast Kerri Strug, who did not compete, but carried the Maccabiah torch into the Ramat Gan stadium for the opening ceremony. Last year, Strug, 20, won the heart of the world at the Atlanta Olympics when she made her final leap despite a sprained ankle, landing on one leg, to claim the team gold medal for the U.S.

Perhaps the greatest ever Jewish sportsman to grace the Maccabiah was also from the U.S. In the 1969 Maccabiah, a young American Jewish swimmer named Marc Spitz won six gold medals. Spitz, of course, went on to win a record seven gold medals in the Munich Olympics in 1972.