From 13 days in a boat to winning at a Grand Slam

From 13 days in a boat to winning at a Grand Slam

DÜSSELDORF, Germany — Latakia is Syria’s principal port, on the country’s western shoreline. Turkey is just to the north.

The war in Syria has been going on for nearly nine years already. Three years into the violence, in 2014, in Latakia, Tareq Jamal and his cousin, Najib, decided to risk it all. They made their way up the shoreline to Turkey, and from there into a wooden boat packed with people.

It took 13 days, across the Mediterranean Sea, to reach Italy. “BIg waves,” he recalled. “Women were crying.” He paused in telling the story. “We were almost to die.”

On Saturday, Tareq Jamal, representing what was called the International Refugee Team, not only competed at the Düsseldorf Grand Slam, he won a match. Ranked 429th in the world in the men’s 73-kilo category — to repeat, No. 429 — he defeated a competitor ranked No. 69 and made a solid case to go to the Olympic Games this summer in Tokyo.

Angelica Delgado and hope for USA judo

Angelica Delgado and hope for USA judo

DÜSSELDORF, Germany — Just moments before, Angelica Delgado — an American! — had won a bronze medal in the women’s under 52-kilo class, and convincingly at that, a no-doubt ippon, and now she was standing in the tunnel here at the ISS Dome, with her coach and the USA Judo high-performance director, and there were tears in her eyes, and these were tears of happiness and relief — and expectation, too.

“It feels really good to get a medal in a qualifying year,” the Tokyo Olympics just months away, the 29-year-old Delgado said.

She added, “To make a statement like this in a qualifying year means I know I can get a medal at the Olympics.”

She wiped away a tear. “I’m just really happy.”

RIP Kobe ... and Shayne

RIP Kobe ... and Shayne

Early last Saturday morning, our nephew — my wife’s sister’s son, Shayne Rebbetoy — fell to his death. He was just 16.

Flying back to California as soon as possible, landing Sunday afternoon at a very foggy Los Angeles International airport, the news: Kobe Bryant and eight others, including his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, had been killed just hours earlier in a helicopter crash near Calabasas.

We have spent this week in shock and grief, and in preparing for the seemingly infinite number of details that attend Shayne’s memorial service, which is set for Saturday. It is a fascinating thing to be very intensely mourning the passing of a teenage boy, a sweet and gentle soul you have known since he literally came to life, with the very public outpouring around the globe for a basketball icon who for some 20 years, since he came into all of our lives, inspired countless hopes and dreams.

Shayne’s mother, Lisa Hudson, my wife’s sister, was one of the early pioneers on the women’s pro beach volleyball circuit, and has for many years been active in the action sports industry. Her friends include Olympic medalists and skateboard legends, and they have rallied around her and her husband, Jack Rebbetoy. A GoFundMe campaign that asked for $10,000 (for grief therapy, among other things) is now five times past that; if you’d like to contribute, here’s the link.

Connecting, inspiring, making memories to make a difference

Connecting, inspiring, making memories to make a difference

TEL AVIV — Yanir Shvartz is 11 years old. He lives in a kibbutz in central Israel, called Nahsonim, that in 2018 had a population of 399. Yanir loves judo. His great hero is Sagi Muki, who in 2019 became the world champion in the men’s under 81-kilogram category.

World champion! An Israeli! 

To say that Yanir loves judo and Sagi Muki would probably be one of the great understatements, and in which order is uncertain, because it is the nature of things that 11-year-old boys and hero-worship tend to go hand in hand. “I like him so much,” Yanir, a little nervous, said. On the sidelines of the 2020 International Judo Federation season-opener here, the 2020 Tel Aviv Grand Prix, in a tent in which a food truck had been set up that was serving hamburgers good enough to have drawn a long, long line, Sagi Muki — himself! — could be found Thursday and Friday with a stack of pictures and a pen, there to sign and talk to all the boys and girls and moms and dads. And, of course, take pictures. Selfies? Sure.

Focus on Moshe Ponte: Israel's driving force in judo

Focus on Moshe Ponte: Israel's driving force in judo

TEL AVIV — In the fall of 2017, the Israeli judo team set out for Abu Dhabi, to take part in the International Judo Federation’s Grand Slam. To get there meant an unexpected and unexplained wait at the airport. The wait stretched to hours. 

Among the Israeli team, no one needed to recite the history of what is what in this part of the world. Everyone knew, and understood. How, though, in such a situation, one naturally filled with any number of anxieties, to keep everyone focused? Calm? Together? 

Moshe Ponte, president of the Israel Judo Association, was having nothing but focus. Concentrate on the competition, he kept saying, and indeed the clearance finally came through, the Israelis were allowed into the United Arab Emirates and, in a memorable scene, Tal Flicker won gold in the men’s under-66 category, singing the Israeli anthem — HaTikvah, or “The Hope” — on the stand even though organizers did not play it.

Recalling it all now, Peter Paltchik, the Israeli standout in the under 100-kilo category who in 2018 would win gold at the Abu Dhabi tour stop, said of Ponte, affectionately, “He is a bulldozer.”

Indeed, the 63-year-old Ponte is one of the leading personalities in world judo. 

Best of the decade: David Rudisha, thank you next

Best of the decade: David Rudisha, thank you next

The end of a decade naturally brings with it a slew of “best-of” lists.

When it comes to the Olympics, there’s really only one best-of from 2010 through 2019. It’s easy, actually. 

It’s Kenya’s David Rudisha winning the men’s 800 on the track at the London 2012 Olympics. It was, and is, the single greatest performance amid the single greatest race in Olympic history from the past 10 years.

Maybe ever. Discuss.  (Jason Lezak in the men’s 4x100 freestyle final in Beijing — rignt up there.)

Some perspective, please

MONACO — The headline in The Times (the one in London) a few days ago proclaimed, “Lord Coe’s plan will lead to slow death of athletics, says Olympic champion Christian Taylor.”

Uh-huh.

Track and field is not dying, not even a slow and unremarkable death, because the triple jump will not be featured on television. You can take that to the bank.

This story, like so many others recently, underscores a trend, particularly as it relates to track and field, that would be particularly distressing if it wasn’t so transparent. The American and British media in particular in recent weeks have been filled with story upon story summoning the spirit of Chicken Little.

Redefining the notion of women's distance running

Redefining the notion of women's distance running

DOHA, Qatar — After all the noise the past few days over Alberto Salazar, finally, Sifan Hassan was free Saturday night to run.

She ran hard, she ran fast, she ran angry. She ran to make a statement and history.

Wow, did she make a statement — that the four-year doping ban handed Salazar late Monday was not going to be a distraction, that she was here on a mission and, people, get out of the way. 

What Sifan Hassan did here at the 2019 IAAF track and field championships may be nothing less than redefine the way we think about women’s distance running.

The first track championships in the Middle East

The first track championships in the Middle East

DOHA, Qatar — Like the sun rising in the east, some things are entirely predictable. 

1. Some number of athletes, particularly those from Europe, bitching about conditions at a world track and field championships. Observation: ’It’s hot.’ (Captains of the obvious!) Followed by hyperbole: a ‘disaster.’ 

2. The see-saw relationship with the press and track and field’s governing body. A few days into a championship, the press writes sky-is-falling stories. (Empty seats! It’s hot! A catastrophe!) The authorities naturally feel compelled to push back, IAAF president Seb Coe telling Associated Press in a story posted Wednesday that the complainers need to move along. 

“Can I just be a bit blunt about this?” Coe, elected here to a second four-year term as head of track and field’s world governing body, asked rhetorically. “The athletes talking about externalities are probably not the ones who are going to be walking home with medals from here. I have much, much bigger commitments and visions for our sport than to turn and head for home because we take an event into an area that poses problems.”

These 2019 IAAF world championships, now heading into the final weekend, seem destined to mark one of the most complex — and yet one of the most intriguing — legacies of any major championship from these first years of the 21st century. 

USADA can save the victory dance: we ain't hardly done with Alberto Salazar

USADA can save the victory dance: we ain't hardly done with Alberto Salazar

DOHA, Qatar — It is a fundamental precept that everyone is entitled to due process, and as the mater of the United States Anti-Doping Agency versus Alberto Salazar makes plain, perhaps no one in the history of anti-doping litigation has ever exercised the process due him as did Alberto Salazar, tagged late Monday with a four-year ban. 

The Salazar matter may come to redefine high-stakes sports-related arbitration as we know it. It sets a new bar for combativeness and litigiousness.  

Now, meantime, we shall see whether — in the court of public opinion — all those athletes who over the years saw themselves in Salazar’s orbit will now be afforded the same fundamental fairness.

The preliminary verdict would suggest that having been anywhere near Salazar — much less been one of his disciples, like the Olympic champion Mo Farah or the silver medalist Galen Rupp — is going to make for a tough go. 

Very tough.