Israel’s bobsled and skeleton racing teams are going downhill fast – and that’s a good thing.
Both “sliding” sports involve racing down an icy track and making fifteen to twenty 90-degree turns at speeds of up to 150 kph.
At the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, the Yanqing National Sliding Center, known as The Dragon, had a 40-story vertical drop over its length of 1,600 meters.
In the bobsled (aka “bobsleigh”) competition, athletes travel the course in a seated position, encased in a 300-kg., hard-shelled vehicle that can be steered.
In skeleton racing, after running about 25 meters in spiked shoes while pushing their sleds, competitors hurl themselves, headfirst and belly-down, atop a sled that’s only 80 cm.-120 cm. long, with their heads hanging off the front and their legs hanging off the back. (In the similar sliding sport of luge, athletes travel on their backs, feetfirst.)
These are dangerous sports. Two luge athletes have died at the Olympic Games since 1964 – more than in any other Olympic events. About 20 skeleton and bobsled athletes have died in training accidents and during competitions since 1907.
Some sliding athletes suffer from “sledhead” (which includes headaches, sensitivity to bright lights and loud noises, forgetfulness, mental fog, and psychological problems) due to the high g-forces and multiple small collisions between the head and the helmet.
In 2018, Ellie Furneaux of Great Britain cut short her skeleton career, after her head slammed into ice that was hard enough to crack her helmet, leaving her with severe neurological problems.
However, despite the risks, sliding sports appeal to athletes who feel the need for speed.
The road to the championship
The Israeli National Bobsled Team was launched in 2002, with skeleton added in 2009, and is now known as Bobsled/Skeleton Israel. The founding members were David Greaves, a Canadian Israeli; Dr. John Frank, a former football player for the San Francisco 49ers; and Aaron Zeff, a former US Air Force pilot.
Israel has since competed in several world cup competitions and will be at the 12th Bobsled and Skeleton World Championships held in Lake Placid, New York, from March 6 to 9 and 15 to 16 this year.
Jared Firestone (skeleton), Adam “AJ” Edelman (bobsled), and Regnars Kirejevs (bobsled) will be competing for Israel in sleek uniforms adorned with blue Stars of David and yellow hostage ribbons.
Firestone, from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, made aliyah in 2019. He won a bronze medal in skeleton in 2021 at the North American Cup in Park City, Utah – the first Israeli medal in the sport.
Edelman grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he attended Maimonides School, an Orthodox day school, before studying in Israel at Yeshivat Lev HaTorah. He made aliyah in 2016.
A former ice hockey goalie and speed skater, Edelman first represented Israel at the North American Cup in Park City in November 2014. He didn’t have a uniform, so he bought a blue fleece jacket at Walmart’s and drew a Star of David on it with a Sharpie pen. The race director said his outfit was an embarrassment, so Edelman competed in gear borrowed from Panamanian, Italian, and Australian athletes.
He finished 18 seconds later than the winner and broke some ribs in the process. Undeterred, he coached himself via YouTube videos and continued to train.
The Israeli skeleton team, represented by Edelman, qualified for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Korea, finishing 28th. Edelman is believed to be the first Orthodox Jew to compete in the Winter Olympic Games.
Edelman is the brother of Tony-winning comedian Alex Edelman. In his HBO comedy special, Alex notes that he bet their father $50 that AJ wouldn’t qualify for the Olympics. Despite betting against him, Alex brags to his audiences about AJ’s sporting accomplishments.
Edelman switched from skeleton to bobsled, and in 2022 the Israeli bobsled team piloted by Edelman just missed qualifying for the Beijing Olympics by 1/10 of a second.
A joint effort
Both Jewish and Druze athletes have been members of the Israeli sliding teams. The Druze athletes include bobsledders Moran Nijem, Amir Fawarsy, and Ward Fawarsy.
Edelman went looking for people who were young and energetic, were involved in sports, and wanted to see sports succeed.
He contacted Druze members of the Israeli rugby team via Instagram and asked them whether they wanted to “do something incredible.”
Sliding during wartime
In October 2023, five members of the Israeli bobsled team were called up for reserve duty in the wake of the Hamas attacks.
To keep the team going in the competition circuit, Edelman made use of local volunteers.
“A friend of Jared’s from Florida flew out to sit in the back of the sled for a week and a half,” he says.Despite these challenges, the Israeli bobsled team captured the overall third place for the North American Cup circuit.
‘Shul’ runnings
Often, the response to the idea of an Israeli bobsled team is a reference to the 1993 movie Cool Runnings, based on the true story of the Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta.
Edelman notes that the Jamaican team first existed at a time when “all you had to do to go to the Olympics was to be able to make it to the bottom of the bobsled track.
“The Jamaican team was the reason the Olympics changed the rules,” he says. “They set a very high bar for getting back into the Games. It was a great story, but they didn’t want to repeat it.”
(Jamaica, by the way, has continued to compete in bobsledding at the Olympics. It finished 14th at the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway – ahead of the US, Russia, and France.)
“People joke about the Israeli team and say it’s like ‘shul runnings,’” says Edelman. “But it’s not just that Jared is the best in the Middle East in skeleton and Israel has the best bobsled team in the Middle East.” In fact, Israel apparently has the only bobsled and skeleton teams in the Middle East. But Edelman’s two-man bobsled team is currently ranked 23rd in the world. Firestone has won gold medals and is the 39th-ranked skeleton athlete in the world.
Israel isn’t necessarily disadvantaged by not having its own track – or the climate to keep it reliably icy. There are only about 12 such tracks in the world – mostly in the US, Canada, and Germany – so most sliding athletes in the 65 to 70 countries that compete need to travel to them as well. Tracks cost about $150 million to build, so it seems unlikely that Israel will be getting one anytime soon.
Olympic dreams
Until recently, Israel was said to be the only country with more Nobel Prizes (13) than Olympic medals.
After winning a record seven medals at the Paris Olympics in 2024, Israel now has a total of 20 Olympic medals – all for the Summer Games.
Israel has never sent more than 10 athletes to the Winter Olympics (versus 88 at the Summer Games in Paris). Only six Israelis competed at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
Firestone and Edelman are hopeful that they’ll be able to increase that number to 15 at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan – including 10 members of the Israeli men’s and women’s bobsled and skeleton teams.
For skeleton and bobsled, which countries’ teams will be invited to the Olympics is determined by the results of competitions between November 2025 and January 13, 2026 – just a few weeks before the Milan Olympics start on February 6.
In skeleton, 25 men and 25 women will compete. Three athletes will participate from each of the two top-ranking countries, and the next four countries can bring two athletes each.Based on their current standings, the Israeli sliding teams are on track to get 2026 Olympic slots – but only if they can secure adequate financial support.
Scarce resources
Sliding sports aren’t cheap.
A bobsled costs about $100,000 for a two-person version, and $120,000 for a four-person.
A skeleton costs about €6,000 for the frame. At least five sets of blades are needed for different racing conditions, at €600 per pair. At Lake Placid in 2024, Firestone was the only skeleton racer without a coach, and he had to make do with one pair of blades.
“It’s like being a race car driver without a pit crew, and with only one set of tires you haven’t changed all season,” says Firestone.
And those are the prices for off-the-shelf equipment. Top teams have their own proprietary designs, often created by race car engineers.
Edelman notes that the US has sunk millions of dollars into a program to make the best bobsleds in the world, using composite materials that allow a sled to flex more efficiently and move down the track with less energy loss.
Each practice run costs $70, and the Israeli team does up to 250 runs every year. Moving the equipment around is also expensive. Shipping a bobsled across the Atlantic costs about $10,000.
Coaching costs $50,000 per year; and, of course, there’s the expense of traveling to competitions. The cost of flights from Israel has greatly increased since the Oct. 7 war began, making it harder to transport athletes to competitions in North America.
Unlike most national sports teams, the Israeli bobsled and skeleton teams don’t receive any government funding. After Oct. 7, the team lost three corporate sponsors, who feared that their support of an Israeli team would be controversial.
Firestone and Edelman say they spend about two to three hours a day training, and then 10 to 12 hours trying to secure funds and generate publicity for the team.
Edelman has a degree in mechanical engineering from MIT and an MBA from Yale, but his training schedule and team fundraising activities don’t leave him enough time for a conventional business career. He quit his job as a product manager at the Oracle hi-tech company in order to train and now works odd jobs like driving for Uber.
Firestone practices as a lawyer when he’s not training for the skeleton.
The teams are trying to raise $500,000 to support their Olympic aspirations, but so far they’ve only raised about $25,000.
Edelman says, “It’s kind of a miracle that Jared and our team have been able to accomplish what we’ve accomplished, since we’re the least-funded athletes in both of our sports.”
Those who want to donate to the effort to bring Israel’s largest-ever delegation to the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Italy can visit www.advancingjewishathletics.org/frozen-chosen.