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by Troy O. Fritzhand
Olympic gold medalist Artem Dolgopyat of Israel celebrates on the podium with his medal, Ariake Gymnastics Centre; Tokyo, Japan; August 1, 2021. REUTERS/Mike Blake
Israel’s 2020 Olympic gold medalist in gymnastics announced on Monday that he will be selling a world championship medal that he earned on October 7, the day of Hamas’ onslaught against Israel.
The 26-year-old gymnast, who was Israel’s second gold medalist when he took home the top prize in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in Floor Exercise, said that all proceeds from the sale will go towards benefiting communities in the Gaza periphery that have been impacted by the Israel-Hamas war.
“I part with the medal without pain but with a lot of emotion,” Artem Dolgopyat, who was born in Ukraine and immigrated to Israel at the age of 12, said. “It is a precious medal. A medal that was all my dreams, a medal that is the peak of my ambitions after the Olympic medal. But today I know that there is something even more important than that. I know that above all, Israeli society is important. I won’t lie, it’s not easy for me, but I feel that through the auction of the medal, I will be able to truly give back to the country that has given me so much.”
The October 7 world championship event held in Belgium was Dolgopyat’s third go at the competition. In the previous two contests he had earned silver.
“It could have been the happiest day for me and for the country, but it wasn’t,” Dolgopyat said about his victory in October.
The starting bid for the medal is $100,000 and will be directed to the Shoresh Fund, which is an emergency assistance fund that is focusing on those impacting by Hamas’ mass terror attack, which took place on the day of Dolgopyat’s victory. On October 7, Hamas terrorists stormed southern Israel, slaughtering more than 1,200 Israelis, mainly civilians, and taking captive more than 200 to the Gaza Strip.
To date, Shoresh has allocated more than 2 million NIS towards relief packages to evacuees, power generators to impacted communities, and food to the elderly.
