{"id":127289,"date":"2026-02-09T04:49:34","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T04:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/127289\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T04:49:34","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T04:49:34","slug":"israeli-bobsled-teams-apartment-robbed-ahead-of-2026-winter-olympics-pilot-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/127289\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli bobsled team’s apartment robbed ahead of 2026 Winter Olympics, pilot says"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Israeli Olympic bobsled team was robbed of thousands of dollars in property and their passports after crooks broke into their Airbnb while they were out training before traveling to Italy for the games, the team\u2019s captain said Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile training for the Olympics the @israelbobsled apartment was broken into during their training, thousands of dollars of stuff and passports were stolen. What a season\u2026\u201d team captain Adam \u201cAJ\u201d Edelman\u00a0posted on X.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"MembersSome members of the team still have not arrived in Italy for the Olympics yet and aren\u2019t expected to leave their training base until this coming week.<\/p>\n

The Israeli team \u2014 which is the first bobsled team from the Jewish State to compete<\/a> in the winter games \u2014 was robbed of their gear, passports suitcases and even their shoes during the break in, Edelman claimed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to say, the @israelbobsled Team is just such a fine example of how we push forward in difficult circumstances. Such a gross violation\u2026 and the boys headed right back to training today. I really believe this team exemplifies the Israeli Spirit,\u201d\u00a0he posted on X.<\/a><\/p>\n

The team was training in the Czech Republic ahead of their competition in Italy, and the incident is being investigated by local authorities.<\/p>\n

The team, who humurously refer to themselves as \u201cShul Runnings\u201d was the brainchild of its captain, coach and driver Edelman, who represented Israel in skeleton<\/a> during the 2018 winter games in South Korea.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost Israelis don\u2019t even know there is a winter Olympics,\u201d he told The Post.<\/p>\n

The athlete, who was born in Brookline Mass., said representing Israel in bobsled<\/a> at the Olympics was the culmination of a decade-long dream.<\/p>\n

\"TwoIsrael is competing in bobsled at the Olympics for the first time, qualifying for the games after Britain decided not to take one of its two allocated spots for Milan Cortina. @realajedelman \/ X<\/p>\n

\u201cReally wanted to change things, there had to be someone who changed how people see Jews in sport and how Jews see themselves in sport,\u201d he told The Post.<\/p>\n

Edelman, whose brother is US stand-up comedian Alex Edelman, said that he sacrificed everything to build the Israeli bobsled team from scratch, and persevered even when nobody believed in his vision.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone basically slammed the door in our face,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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The athlete struggled to find sponsors, and bought equipment for the team with money he earned driving for Uber, he even sunk his retirement savings into the effort. He personally recruited team members off of Instagram and had to train the Israelis \u2014 some of whom have never seen snow before \u2014 himself.<\/p>\n

He finally was able to secure a sponsor who gave the team a large sum on one condition, that they include not an ad, but a Torah verse on their sled.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know G-d was in this place, but surely he is,\u201d the quote, from Genesis 28:16, read.<\/p>\n

His dreams finally came to fruition in January when it was announced that the team would have a spot at this year\u2019s games after Britain opted to only send one bobsled team instead of two to Italy.<\/p>\n

With Post Wires<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Israeli Olympic bobsled team was robbed of thousands of dollars in property and their passports after crooks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[55008,60,9,11,10,15559,2955,319,53276],"class_list":{"0":"post-127289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-bobsledding","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-news","13":"tag-olympics","14":"tag-robberies","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-winter-olympics-2026"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}