Israel wins 3 medals — including a gold — in historic day at Paris Olympics
Israel has won six medals in Paris, its most ever in a single Olympics

Tom Reuveny celebrates after winning the gold medal in the men’s windsurfing iQFoil final at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Aug. 3, 2024, in Marseille, France. (Clive Mason/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Tom Reuveny won Israel’s first gold medal of the Paris Olympics Saturday in the men’s iQFoil windsurfing final, while Sharon Kantor nabbed silver in the women’s event and artistic gymnast Artem Dolgopyat won silver in the floor exercise.
The three medals bring Israel’s total count in Paris to six, surpassing Israel’s previous record of four at a single Olympics, which it achieved at the 2020 Tokyo Games. Saturday was also the first time Israel won three medals in a single day.
Reuveny’s gold — Israel’s fourth ever — comes 20 years after his coach, Gal Fridman, won Israel’s first-ever gold medal at the 2004 Athens Games in the men’s sailboard competition. Israel last won a sailing medal in 2008.
Reuveny and Kantor each won their first-ever medals, while Dolgopyat had won gold in the men’s floor exercise in Tokyo. He is now the first Israeli athlete to medal at consecutive Olympics.
Over Shabbat Israel won THREE Olympic medals 🇮🇱
— Amy Spiro (@AmySpiro) August 3, 2024
Gold for Tom Reuveny in windsurfing
Silver for Artem Dolgopyat in gymnastics
Silver for Sharon Kantor in windsurfing
The games are only half over and Israel has already had its best ever Olympics in history with 6 medals so far. pic.twitter.com/alQh7Y5e9r
Israel has now won 19 Olympic medals, five of which have come in sailing events. Judo is Israel’s most decorated sport, with nine. Israel earlier won three medals in judo in Paris, two silvers and one bronze.
Reuveny mentioned that the country’s unprecedented success has come in wartime.
“My brother has been a combat soldier since the war began,” Reuveny, 24, told Reuters after his win.
“It was so hard to go training while everyone else was crying over lost people, dead people,” Reuveny added. “It’s been so hard and I still had to put my head down and keep training and it’s all for this moment.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog called Reuveny to congratulate him on his gold medal win, according to the Times of Israel, telling the windsurfer, “You made an entire nation happy, a nation that is at war and that is praying for the return of its hostages… you brought us a great light… you caused our national anthem to be played at this Olympics in Paris.”
Dolgopyat, who was born in what is now Dnipro, Ukraine, and moved to Israel when he was 12, said after his win that the feat brought him some much-needed relief. He had come to Paris as a medal favorite but underperformed in the qualifying round.
“I had difficult months in training and in the qualifying round I didn’t do so well and didn’t know if I’d pass,” Dolgopyat said, according to the Times of Israel. “I fell into a sort of depression. The team helped me and picked me up… I came today feeling very good… Now I’m the happiest I could be.”
Kantor, the first Israeli woman to win a sailing medal, celebrated her country’s overall success after her silver medal.
“Look how many medals we’ve won!” Kantor said. “First in judo and now here. It’s incredible.”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Need a final solution’: Podcast host calls for mass deportation of U.S. Jews
-
Fast Forward Britain’s Tate to return Nazi-looted painting to heirs of Jewish art collector
-
Fast Forward 3 sentenced to death for murder of UAE Chabad rabbi
-
Books The White House Seder started in a Pennsylvania basement. Its legacy lives on.
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.