DOHA, Qatar — As she came off the tatami in delighted shock at what she had just done, Inbar Lanir of Israel looked at her coach, Shany Hershko, and said, “What’s this?”
Lanir had just thrown France’s Audrey Tcheuméo, the Rio 2016 Games silver medalist, to become the 2023 judo world champion in the women’s 78-kilo class.
A few moments later in this Arab nation, they lifted the Israeli flag and played the Israeli anthem, Hatikva — it means “the hope” — and Lanir, alone at the top of the podium, wiped tears from her eyes. These were tears of joy. Of happiness. And wonder.
Inbal Lanier, right, with coach Shany Hershko
This is the hope of sport — that it can transcend political differences. Because when they played the anthem and lifted the flag, it was — normal. Everything was totally, completely normal.
As it should be.
Just like when, a few moments later, the Russian Arman Adamian —competing here as a neutral athlete — won the men’s under-100 kilo title, defeating the two-time Olympic champion Lukáš Krpálek of the Czech Republic.
Arman Adamian, competing as a neutral athlete, champion at 100 kilos // Getty Images
The International Judo Federation allowed 19 Russian and Belarussian athletes to compete as neutrals at these championships — a move that prompted Ukraine to boycott.
Adamian, locked out of international competition for eight months because of the war in Ukraine, is the first of the neutrals to win a medal. Three others have, so far, finished seventh. For him, organizers played the IJF anthem and raised the Doha 2023 flag.
“I want to emphasize that we are against the war and discrimination,” IJF director general Vlad Marinescu had said a few days ago.
“This is sport and there is no place here for politics.”
Israel’s Peter Paltchik took bronze along with Azerbaijan’s Zelym Kotsolev. For Paltchik, it marked his first individual title on the world stage.
In Israel, judo athletes are big stars.
Yael Arad, since 2021 president of the national Olympic committee, won Israel’s first-ever Olympic medal, in 1992, a silver. Sagi Muki, who finished fifth here in the men’s 81-kilo class, won the world title in 2019. Yarden Gerbi, a bronze medalist at the Rio 2016 Games, is the 2013 world champion in the women’s 63-kilo category.
Lanir is 23. On Instagram, she is given to musing about her body image, saying that when she was 12 her dream was that the boys in her class would invite her to a slow dance at a Bat Mitzvah, the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony, but now, writing in Hebrew, “Being strong is so beautiful, and true beauty comes from within. And when you stand with the medal on your neck in the most important competition of your life, you will thank yourself for the decision to be strong.”
Like Friday. Here in Qatar.
“I said before I fought that being on the podium would be enough for me,” she said afterward. “Never in my sweetest dreams would I have thought of being world champion today.”
Arad, in Paris Friday for a meeting of European Olympic committees, said she watched the action from Qatar on her laptop. “Inbar Lanir and Peter Paltchik gave a great performance today in Doha,” she said, adding that she and her nation are now even more “looking forward to Paris, 15 months before the Olympic Games.
“Inbar, with sophisticated judo and determination, brought each and every Israeli with tears in our eyes and made us so proud. And Peter proved again that he is a top judoka.”
To show how our world turns:
Paltchik was born in Yalta, the city in Crimea that is now held by Russia. At nine months old, he and his mother, Larisa, immigrated to Israel.
Six years ago, at the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam, organizers refused to acknowledge the nationality of only one group of athletes — the Israelis. No flags, symbols or anthem. The Israeli athletes competed under the IJF flag because the UAE did not recognize Israel; when Tal Flicker won the 66-kilo class, for instance, he heard the IJF anthem.
After that, IJF president Marius Vizer said there would be no Abu Dhabi tour stop unless everyone was treated equally. Organizers ultimately said, OK.
At the 2018 Abu Dhabi event, Paltchik and Muki won gold. Israeli sports minister Miri Regev was at the event, the first Israeli minister to visit the UAE in an official capacity. The day before Muki’s gold, a gunman carried out the worst antisemitic attack on American soil, killing 11 Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Listening to Hatikva in the arena in Abu Dhabi, seeing the flag, Regev was in tears, along with many others.
These were not just tears of happiness. They betrayed the emotion of so much more.
Vizer, for the record, has for years been not just relentless but unyielding in his pursuit of the notion that everyone everywhere deserves to be treated the same. Israeli, Arab, Russian, Ukrainian, black, white, Muslim, Christian, Jew, whoever, wherever.
When in sports you treat everyone the same, then — perhaps — you can find a way, in time, for the normal to follow.
In August 2020, Israel and the UAE signed a deal that called for the two nations to establish full diplomatic relations, the UAE to become the third Arab state, besides Egypt and Jordan, to fully recognize Israel. By December, three more states had joined in the Abraham Accords — Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.
In opening these 2023 judo world championships, Vizer said:
“Sport is the last and most important bridge for international society in crisis periods and difficult moments.
“Today we are living in a difficult moment; a special confrontation which affects the whole world. We have to keep sport safe. Sport is no place for war, politics or discrimination. We have to be united and modern for the next generation, inspiring the leaders of today on how to bring peace and how to bring stability back to the world.”