You probably don’t think much about the sport of skeleton unless you’re watching the Winter Olympics. Off the top of your head, you’re probably not even sure what the sport is. And you certainly don’t think of Israel as a powerhouse in this or any other wintertime endeavor.
But AJ Edelman would like to change that.
Here’s how Edelman, Israel’s great 2018 Olympic skeleton hope, describes the sport: “You have a lunch tray with hockey [skate] blades on the bottom, lie down headfirst on your stomach and you fly down an icy track at speeds up to about 90 mph and try to get down faster than anyone else.”
The recent Bay Area resident and Orthodox Jew hopes that, with the support of Israel’s bobsled and skeleton federation and an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, the long, icy track will eventually lead him to the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. “I’m confident that it’s possible for Israel to be represented in this sport in the Olympic games,” he said.
Edelman, 24, has come to represent Israel — he competed in the world championships wearing a sleek blue and white Israel uniform last week — by way of Belmont. He lived there for 14 months while working for Redwood City-based Oracle, and has been on an extended leave of absence since November to pursue his skeleton dreams.
There are four Israeli athletes active in the sport, but Edelman is ranked the highest, currently No. 62 in the world. He will need to climb into the top 60 by 2018 in order to qualify for the Olympics.
At last week’s world bobsled and skeleton championships in Innsbruck, Austria, Edelman finished 33 out of 34 competitors, though it had no impact on his world ranking. “With the right resources, an athlete in my position has a chance of getting to the Olympics,” he said.
Edelman is still in Europe, finalizing plans to move there. “I’m confident the coaching available there will be a big boon toward bridging the gap between where I am and where I’d like to be,” he said.
Edelman has already surpassed his own goal for this year. “I was hoping to get a ranking below 75 this season, so we’re pretty happy with 62.”
David Greaves, president of the Israeli bobsled and skeleton federation, is enthusiastic about Edelman’s chances of qualifying for the Olympics. “He’s incredibly driven and dedicated. Taking years off from work and his life to do this, he’s just a very focused guy. I have a great deal of confidence that he will be able to achieve his goals,” Greaves said. “It’s been an amazing year. He’s been pretty exciting to watch.”
Despite his success in the sport, Edelman has been involved with it for only three years. But he is a committed athlete, having played baseball, soccer and hockey as a youth and club-level hockey for MIT in college. He also competed as an amateur bodybuilder for a while.
At the same time, the 5-foot-10, 176-pounder is a committed Orthodox Jew. At one point, Edelman considered going to a private high school to pursue hockey, but decided to continue with his education at an Orthodox day school in his hometown of Brookline, Massachusetts.
Shortly after graduating from MIT in 2014 with a degree in mechanical engineering, Edelman moved to the Bay Area and worked at Oracle. While here, he got to see his aunt and uncle, Leslie and Raphael Edelman, who live in Oakland and are involved with Oakland Hebrew Day School.
Surprisingly, the Israeli bobsled and skeleton federation had a tie-in with the Bay Area even before Edelman came along. One of the founding members of the Israeli bobsled team in 2002 was former San Francisco 49ers star John Frank, who was also a member of the “Frozen Chosen” squad that competed in the 2004 world championship but fell short of qualifying for the 2006 Winter Olympics.
As for Edelman, his experiences as a religious Jewish athlete competing at a high level have not always been positive and have become a big part of why he does what he does. Playing hockey at MIT, for example, while wearing a kippah and goalie pads with Stars of David on them, “people identify you as a religious Jew, which many people have never really met,” he said. “I thought that, for whatever reasons, my talents were not fully utilized because of who I was.”
He even felt some resistance from fellow Jews. “Some of the reactions that I got while playing [at the collegiate level] is that religious Jews don’t do sports, and it was even somewhat self-perpetuating in the Jewish community,” he said. “I became very intent on proving to myself and others that it was very possible for a Jew to compete at an elite level of sport and inspire other young Jews to do the same.”
Edelman also sees himself as something of an ambassador for Israel. “Having Israel in any of these competitions, much less the Olympics, introduces people to a concept of Israel different from what they read in the headlines,” he said. “I’m the first Orthodox Jew that most of my fellow athletes meet, much less a Zionist that can talk with them about those issues.”
Spectators who know nothing of Edelman would be hard-pressed to miss his Jewishness on the track. His uniform is blue with white stripes, adorned with an Israeli flag and “Israel” written in English down one leg and Hebrew down the other.
“I designed it myself to make it near impossible to take a picture of it from any angle without making it clear that it’s an Israeli uniform,” he said. “My primary goal in life is to inspire Jewish athletes to compete at high levels as proud Jews,” and the bold uniform is part of that, he added.
And then there’s his distinctive, custom-designed helmet, with a vibrant tableau of Samson, the super-powered biblical strongman, adorning the front.
“It’s to remind me and whoever is watching that Jews are a strong people. Shimshon [Samson] really embodies that, so I wanted him front and center,” Edelman said.
One side of the helmet has the text of the Shema, and the other has the famous Zionist quote from Theodor Herzl, “Im tirtzu, ein zo agadah” — “If you will it, it is no dream.”