It all started when Adam “A.J.” Edelman slid into some DMs.
The Israeli athlete, who in 2018 made history as the first Orthodox person to compete in the Winter Olympics, was putting together a bobsled team. And the skeleton racer was recruiting in quite the unorthodox way: sending messages and making cold calls to find four male athletes — and the necessary funding — to make Israel’s bobsled team a reality.
Like many an Israeli before him who dreamed life into the seemingly impossible, Edelman managed the never-before-achieved feat and is now the captain of Israel’s first bobsled team, representing the Jewish nation at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. The team is known as “Shul Runnings,” a take-off on the 1993 movie about the Jamaican bobsled team, “Cool Runnings,” and both teams’ stories are magically unlikely. Israel’s team has also been nicknamed the “frozen chosen” and “the little sleigh that could.”
Israel has achieved quite a few Olympic feats over the years, including a record-breaking seven medals in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Yet the country has never won a medal at a winter Olympics. Israel, given its Middle Eastern climate, just isn’t known for participating in the kind of athletics we’re watching at Milan Cortina.
Edelman’s dream isn’t just to compete on sports’ biggest stage — for the second time in history, wearing that same kippah he wore in 2018 — but it’s also to show Israelis that they, too, can be part of winter sports.
He’s certainly done that for the athletes who joined him on Israel’s bobsled team. “Many of the people on the team, when I reached out to them, they thought it was like a scam at first,” Edelman told the New York Times.
Ward Fawarsy, who is making history as the first Druze to represent Israel in the Olympics, was a passionate lover of rugby who owned his own sports club when Edelman sent him an Instagram DM.
Uri Zisman, a former pole vaulter who represented his country in competitions abroad, had given up on his own Olympic dreams when Edelman called him during a post-army trip to India.
Omer Katz, a former sprinter, thought an injury had put an end to his sports career when Edelman reached out to him.
And Menachem Chen was an Israeli discus-throwing and shot put champion, also recruited by Edelman to the bobsled team. (Chen and Edelman almost made it to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing with the two-man bobsled team, but missed qualifying by 0.1 seconds).
The bobsled team’s coach, Itamar Shprinz, comes from the world of weightlifting and CrossFit.
And yet together (along with honorary team member, Lulu, Edelman’s Shiba Inu), they are quite an impressive group. They make up half of the 10-member Israeli delegation to the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Shul Runnings is the product of Edelman’s 12 years of dreaming, after the MIT and Yale grad was asked to play hockey for Israel back in 2013 and decided that he wanted to do much more for the nation that he said “saved his life.”
The Brookline, Massachusetts, native — the brother of Emmy-winning comedian Alex Edelman — already made history when he won a bronze medal at the IBSF North American Circuit, earning Israel its first bobsled medal.
The current Shul Runnings team was assembled after most of Edelman’s original team was called up to the reserves after the Oct. 7, 2023. Since then, they’ve trained together all over the world, especially in Edelman’s native U.S. They were in Lake Placid, New York, when they found out they had qualified for the Olympics.
Every little thing matters when it comes to bobsled; it’s all about synchronization, power and working together. The team has already faced plenty of challenges, from calls for a boycott to being booed at the opening ceremony to being robbed the next day, but their spirit is strong. To paraphrase “Cool Runnings,” you can definitely see pride, see power in this crew!
“My mom says to me, ‘Isn’t it dangerous that you’ll have a Star of David on your back?’” Zisman told the AP earlier this month. “I say, no mom, that’s what we do. We do the best we can.”
Israel’s bobsled team will be competing Feb 16, 17, 21 and 22 at the Cortina Sliding Center. We’ll be cheering them on.
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