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This close to a medal By Avner Bernheimer Tags: China, Olympics Before I once again ask you to boycott the Olympic Games in China for all the right reasons - and I don't mean their food, even though I do prefer Thai, Indian, Vietnamese or even Tibetan - I must confess that I once trained for the Olympics myself. If you look very hard, you can still see it on me. Although I was just a baby in 1972, when terrorists attacked the Israeli Olympic team in Munich, it left a strong impression on me and made me dream of winning a victory over the terrorists. During the Montreal Olympics in 1976, I lost my cool in front of a black-and-white television set, cheering Esther Roth-Shachamorov on to sixth place in the 100-meter-hurdles finals. When she made history, I decided that I, too, would join the national effort. Choosing the sport in which I would represent Israel in subsequent Olympics was not easy. Today I know that the easiest way to bring home a medal is to choose an obscure sport with very few competitors, such as sailing an unpopular kind of boat. If possible, the model should be one of your own making; with some appropriate lobbying and bribes, you can easily persuade the local Olympic Committee to approve it for the next Games. You can also invent a sporting event, like the one that recently won me over, visually at least: aquathlon - underwater wrestling. Of course, at age 10 I did not yet know all of this, and like an idiot I looked for popular events to compete in, out of complete faith that no one could stand in my way. Advertisement My first choice was judo. In retrospect, it turns out that my intuition was not entirely wrong. After all, over the years judo has come to occupy a prominent place in Israel's crop of Olympic medals, and had I been more persistent about training, you would probably have heard of me long before you heard of Arik Ze'evi. But it didn't really work out. Both because my trainer at the time, Yonah Melnik, one of Israel's top judo masters, used to demonstrate every new move on me, being the tallest kid in the class - one time he threw me down on the mattress and I dislocated my pinkie - and also because I didn't really like getting beaten up. I know judo is not really about beating anyone up, but still, you get kicked, you get strangled, and I was afraid that my perfect complexion would be damaged. Eventually I left because I made green belt and it didn't really go with anything I was wearing back then. Looking back, perhaps I should have stayed with the judo. I suppose that as an adolescent I would have enjoyed this contact sport more, and that would have given me enough motivation to carry on to the Olympics. But I didn't see it that way at the time, and after my pinkie was set in place and put in a cast for a month, I decided that I would represent Israel in one of the upcoming Games as a swimmer. Something told me this sport would be perfect for me, with my height, broad shoulders, giant feet, or maybe because of all those boys in Speedos around me. It's hard to pinpoint exactly. Either way, I looked in the mirror and saw the Eitan Orbach of my time. "I want to join a swim club," I told my parents, who immediately enrolled me in the Hapoel swim team at Ramat Hashavim, a moshav near Kfar Sava. Few can appreciate the difficulties we professional swimmers face. What began as a pleasant after-school activity, three evenings a week, became the focus of my existence from age 10 to 16. Five afternoons a week I would take bus No. 561 from the central bus station in Petah Tikva, get off at the Ramot Hashavim stop, walk 20 minutes to the pool, train for two hours, swim about four kilometers, walk back to the stop, and wait in the dark on an abandoned country road for the bus to take me home. Three times a week I would travel the same route at 5:30 A.M. as well, then train and go straight to school at 8 A.M. In the winter there were trips to the heated pools at Beit Berl or the Wingate Institute, and practice sessions in the pouring rain. If not for my fierce desire to avenge the murder of the athletes in Munich, I would not have survived. When I was almost 17, with no Olympic medal in sight and the constant smell of chlorine in my hair wreaking havoc on my social life, I decided to quit. It wasn't an easy decision. I was worried about losing my washboard abs, and also afraid to tell my parents, who were sure they were raising a young Mark Spitz. For several weeks, therefore, I acted as though it was business as usual. I caught the 561, walked around for two hours in the fields between Ramot Hashavim and the Ra'anana junction, and went home as though nothing had changed. In retrospect, I could have simply spent those two hours in Petah Tikva, hanging out with the friends who were my reason for giving up the Olympic dream in the first place, but I wasn't that sophisticated. I kept going to the pool, perhaps to catch the fumes of chlorine from a safe distance, but maybe also because I found it hard to break away. I thought I could deceive my parents this way until my army service, but one day Rochaleh from the swim club called to ask how I was doing, and the scam was exposed. I thought they would be more upset, but it turned out that they had long ago given up all hope of a medal. There was this Harel guy who was always beating me, and they couldn't understand why I was suffering such disgrace for so long. They were genuinely embarrassed to see me lose so often at swim meets, and it was only because I was so bummed out, emerging from the water with yet another bronze or silver medal, if any, that my folks would say: "It's not so bad, you're young, you'll swim in the next Olympics." In fact, nothing bored them more than my dismal finishes at Wingate competitions. What can I tell you? If it weren't for one back-stroker who made a pass at me and went all the way, I'd be asking for my youth back. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Safe haven reached 200 fleeing Georgia after the outbreak of hostilities arrive at Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport. Fatal heartbreak Disabled man dies of heart attack after his girlfriend was arrested by Immigration Police.

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