Israeli Shooter Doron Shaziri Wins Bronze at Rio Paralympics
Image by Getty Images
RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA) — Israeli athlete Doron Shaziri won a bronze medal at the Rio Paralympic Games, Israel’s second medal at the games so far.
Shaziri won the medal Monday in men’s R7-50m Rifle 3 Positions, coming behind Laslo Suranji of Serbia, who took gold, and Abdulla Sultan Alaryani of the United Arab Emirates, who took silver
One day earlier, rower Moran’s Samuel also gave Israel a bronze, the first medal for the Jewish state at the competition.
This was Shaziri’s eighth Paralympic medal. In 2012, he won a silver medal at the London Paralympics, where he was also Israel’s flag bearer at the opening ceremony. Prior to that, he won two silver and four bronze medals in the 1996 Atlanta, 2000 Sydney, 2004 Athens, and 2008 Beijing Paralympics.
A gold medal earned in the 2015 Open Championships in Germany assured Shaziri of a spot in the Rio Paralympics.
In 1987, Shaziri was working as an Israel Defense Forces soldier while patrolling the Israeli-Lebanon border, where he tried to rescue his comrades from an attack but was seriously injured by a mine. After the incident, he went to a military hospital where he was fitted for a prosthetic leg.
Some 4,300 Paralympians are fighting for medals at the event which ends on September 18 in Brazil’s second largest city, where three weeks ago Israeli judokas Yarden Gerbi and Or Sasson both won bronze medals at the Summer Olympics.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
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. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
