The man who piloted the Israeli bobsled team to its first-ever Olympic Games defended the athlete-swapping scheme that led to the team’s removal from competition, saying in an interview with the Forward that the Israeli sporting authority blew the incident out of proportion.

The Olympic Committee of Israel said it pulled the team after learning that a member had faked an illness in order to allow the substitution of a teammate in his place.

AJ Edelman, the team’s captain, did not contest that account. He said that the substitution was unanimously agreed to by the group, calling it “essentially a normal maneuver” at the Olympics given what he called a “somewhat arbitrary” rule that allows alternates to compete only when an athlete is medically unable to continue.

The reason it didn’t work, he said, was that the teammate chosen to fake sick tipped off the Israeli committee, which needed to approve the substitution.

“We’re not the only team to have made that sort of substitution in the competition,” Edelman, 34, said in a phone interview with the Forward from Prague, shortly after midnight local time Tuesday. “We are the only team for which the person then was just upset that he was the one doing it and made a scene about it.”

The swap would have made Ward Fawarsy, who was traveling with the squad as an alternate, the first Druze Israeli to appear in Olympic competition. Instead, the committee pulled the team before its third race, cutting short Israel’s run with two heats remaining.

The Israeli committee said in a statement that it had reported the matter to the International Olympic Committee and would conduct an investigation after the Games.

The exit — which Edelman characterized as a voluntary withdrawal — blighted a budding underdog success story. The team, nicknamed “Shul Runnings” (a play on the title of a popular movie about the 1988 Jamaican team), had scrapped its way into the Olympics without financial support from Israel — largely thanks to the perseverance of Edelman, its indefatigable spearhead, who told the Forward he saw the team as a “holy endeavor.”

Without a national sports program behind him, Edelman, a former MIT hockey goaltender, had recruited Israeli athletes from other sports to the project — Zisman was a former pole vaulter, Fawarsy played rugby — and crowdfunded relentlessly to pay for their training. He said this year was the first he broke even, with the team’s costs totaling to around $300,000.

After narrowly missing qualification in 2022 and 2026, Israel broke through in January, receiving an invitation after the United Kingdom decided to send only one team instead of two.

But at the end of a whirlwind month in which the team was burglarized at its pre-Olympic lodgings, booed at the opening ceremony and drawn into controversy involving multiple foreign broadcasters, Israel’s withdrawal left it below teams that crashed in the final results for 4-man bobsled, marked “Did Not Start” on the scoresheet.

Israel also finished last out of 26 teams in 2-man sled.

Taking the plunge

The fake illness plan was set in motion after the second of four heats in the 4-man competition, with Israel in 24th place out of 27 and medaling out of reach.

Olympic rules generally do not allow alternates to compete unless a team member has to withdraw due to injury or illness. The idea to fake an injury, according to Edelman, had been Zisman’s earlier in the year, when it appeared that he, not Fawarsy, would be the alternate. Edelman said he nixed the proposal at the time.

But in Italy, with Fawarsy the alternate due to a pre-Olympics injury, Edelman went for the switch.

“Ward’s inclusion was important because of his years of service to the team, because of who he was and because of who he represented,” Edelman said. “I was quite proud that a group of young Israelis took a look at their brother, their teammate, and said, ‘This is important for you. This is important for us.’”

After the group agreed to the plan, the question became which team member would drop out.

According to Edelman, Zisman thought it should be Menachem Chen, because he had raced with Edelman in the 2-man. But Zisman, Edelman said, “was the weakest performer. And given that Ward’s position was his position in the sled, they were somewhat interchangeable.”

Zisman appeared to begrudgingly go along with the arrangement at first, undergoing a medical exam and signing an affidavit to support the substitution request, according to Israeli officials. But Edelman said that during that process, Zisman volunteered that “another athlete should do it instead, and at that point Israel made it what it became.”

The Olympic Committee of Israel said in a statement that Zisman had admitted to the head of the delegation that he had acted improperly, forcing the committee to withdraw the request and disqualify the move.

“The Olympic Committee of Israel views any deviation from the Olympic values as unacceptable and cannot accept inappropriate behavior,” the OCI statement added. “It should be emphasized that, up to this point, the participation of the bobsleigh delegation has taken place in the spirit of sport and without any violations by the athletes.”

The Israel committee did not respond to questions sent by the Forward, and Zisman did not respond to a request for comment.

Edelman flatly disagreed with the committee’s decision.

“We felt that it was completely fine, given that it was essentially a normal maneuver,” Edelman said. “It was really blown into something that we hadn’t expected. Israel insisted on sort of making an example of the situation.”

Iced out of Italy

The incident capped a Winter Olympics in which Israel appeared in more headlines due to controversy than competition. The country did not medal at Milan Cortina — it has never medaled at a Winter Games — and most of its athletes ended competition in the bottom half of contestants.

The first Israeli delegation to compete at the Winter Olympics since the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, was also a frequent target at the Games. Much of the ire from foreign press and other athletes targeted Edelman, who has been a vocal defender of Israel’s war in Gaza on social media.

As Israel was racing in the 2-man event, a commentator for a Swiss TV broadcast listed Edelman’s comments and actions related to the war, which it said were “in support of the genocide in Gaza.” The network later apologized.

An Italian commentator also landed in hot water after he told someone off camera but on live air to avoid the Israeli team.

Edelman said the hostility extended to his fellow bobsled athletes, and claimed that one had called the team “baby killers.” He declined to name the athlete or say what country he represented.

“I take a look at a guy like that, who has made the Olympics a couple of times, and I go, ‘What a loser,’” Edelman said. “He spends his time worrying about Israelis or Jews? What a total loser. So I just don’t put too much stock in it.”

Edelman did not want to highlight the role Fawarsy’s ethnic background played in the team’s decision to break the rules, saying doing so “minimizes him as an athlete and it minimizes him as a person, into something demographic.” At the same time, he appeared to allude to Fawarsy serving in the IDF as a reason for his inclusion.

On Oct. 12, 2023, Edelman posted a picture of Fawarsy to Instagram, writing in the caption that his teammate was “serving on the front lines right now.” (He edited the caption earlier this month to, “Love Ward. Send him a message with your support!”)

“He served Israel with distinction and a level of heroism that all of us aspire to have in our lives,” Edelman told the Forward, adding, “Ward earned it and deserved it as much, if not more, than any of the other guys.”

Fawarsy did not respond to an inquiry.

Frozen fallout

Few in the public sphere have found inspiration in the team’s intentional rule-breaking, even done in service of a Druze athlete’s achievement. Israel’s i24 news broadcast called it a “dramatic and disappointing development.” The Times of Israel said the team’s “legacy was tainted.”

And David Greaves, the president of the Israeli Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, told Times of Israel that he was “deeply disappointed in the actions of the team.”

Edelman maintained that the public reaction reflected a lack of context about how the sport tends to operate.

He compared the move to a football player seeking medical treatment to stop the clock or buy time for fatigued teammates. But that ploy, he noted, conferred a competitive advantage his team’s swap had not.

The rule that alternates could not compete was arbitrary in Edelman’s view because it was mostly designed to limit the census of the Olympic Village. He said that other teams had similarly broken the rule with none the wiser.

“When you take a look at the sport from the outside and don’t understand how the sport works, what the usual behavior is in the sport and why things are the way they are,” he said, “the decision seems like a very heavy risk to have taken on. The move is not unusual. It is not uncommon whatsoever.”

It did not appear that any other men’s bobsled teams made substitutions at the 2026 Games. It was unclear how many alternates ultimately competed at Milan Cortina.

At least one alternate was substituted in in another sport: Rich Ruohonen, an athlete on the U.S. curling team, entered competition late in a match with his team facing a near-insurmountable deficit. His throws made Ruohonen the oldest-ever U.S. Winter Olympian. It was unclear how he was able to substitute, and U.S. broadcasters embraced the moment. (Ruohonen could not be reached for comment.)

In a statement to X following news of the team’s withdrawal, Edelman took accountability for the decision and said he believed he had been “putting the country first.” And while he believed Israel was held to a higher standard than other countries, he was not sure that should have influenced his team’s choices.

“A lot of people have asked, ‘Would you do it again?’” Edelman told the Forward. “I think it would have been very hard in the future for all of us to take a look back on it and go, ‘You know, every other team does this sort of thing — we were just not going to get Ward in there because we’re looked at extra harshly if something goes wrong.’

“Again, it’s tough to explain to outsiders who don’t know the sport,” he continued. “So I feel very comfortable and confident in the decision that the team unanimously took.”

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