(JTA) — Amit Elor is leaving the Paris Olympics the same way she went in: undefeated.
Elor, who is Jewish and the daughter of Israeli immigrants who moved to the United States in 1980, bested Kyrgyzstan’s Meerim Zhumanazarova 3-0 in the gold medal contest Tuesday evening to extend a five-year winning streak.
The win makes 20-year-old Elor, who grew up in Walnut Creek, the all-time youngest U.S. gold medalist in wrestling.
It also means that she joins a handful of other Jewish wrestlers to win gold medals on the mat. Károly Kárpáti of Hungary won gold at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin; he was later imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, where he witnessed the murder of gold medalist fencer Attila Petschauer but survived. Henry Wittenberg won gold for the United States in 1948 despite tearing several tendons in an earlier match; he went on to help launch Israel’s Maccabiah Games and coach wrestling at Yeshiva University. An annual national Jewish high school wrestling tournament bears his name.
Elor, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors who moved to Israel, experienced both online antisemitism and the sudden deaths of both her father and a brother during the years when she broke into the elite ranks of U.S. women’s wrestlers. She wrestles at the 68-kilogram weight class and in October became the youngest American wrestler — male or female — ever to win a senior world title.
“It killed me at the time that he didn’t see that,” she said, referring to her father Yair Elor. “He would have been so proud.”
Amit’s fascination with wrestling started at age 4, watching her older sister Ronny and older brother Orry excel in the sport. Both later became champions.
“After watching their practices, I wanted to wrestle too,” she told J. last month. “Luckily there was a youth wrestling program available. Until I reached middle school, there were almost no girls for me to wrestle, so I competed against boys. There were times I felt isolated being the only girl. At school, some kids would tease me for wrestling. During training, I’ve had coaches push me to the sidelines, and boys that refused to be my partner. But through all of it, I still fell in love with wrestling.”
She only spoke Hebrew until she started attending JCC preschool in Contra Costa County, she said. “I often felt different, not knowing why. I think I only realized the impact of being culturally Israeli and Jewish as I got older. I would often feel uncomfortable telling others I was Jewish, but now it’s something I am proud of. I believe I would not be the person I am today without my Jewish background.”