Smiles, tears as Israelis embrace first gold medalist

GLYFADA, Greece - As dusk fell in Greece, beside a Seronic Gulf calmer than any day in the Mideast, the national anthem of Israel came to the Olympics.

In the stands of the sailing venue, they sang and waved flags and cried, by the hundreds. On the award podium stood a timid windsurfer, draped in a flag. The Olympic hero his nation has waited a blood-soaked lifetime to find.

When the anthem was done, there was no holding the people back. They poured from the stands, stormed the podium, engulfed Gal Fridman in a frenzy.Maybe that works in a college football stadium when the goalposts come down. But these were the Olympics, a place of barriers and guards and distance between athletes and the outside world - and who should know why better than the Israelis?

For the longest time, he was a smiling face nearly lost in the masses. A remarkable, surreal scene at the Games that spent $1.3 billion on security.

The Greek organizers seemed utterly taken aback. But how could they understand what this moment meant, to a nation whose Olympic history before Wednesday included 11 dead, but no gold medals?

``The country is full of smiles, and nobody can wipe it away now,'' said Alex Gilady, Israel's delegate to the International Olympic Committee.

``This is a few moments of joy to people who have had very hard lives. The first one is very, very special.''

Not far away, stood Zvi Varshaviak, the head of Israel's Olympic Committee. A man who has seen Munich, and the years since, when the Olympic movement seemed to want to forget.

Rarely is there a mention of 1972. Only Israel has been left to remember; the widows and fatherless children, and athletes who followed, who visit the memorial to Munich in Tel Aviv before every Olympic trip.

``What do I feel? It's up in the sky,'' Varshaviak said, pointing. ``They want to kill us, but we are here. And we have the gold medal.''

The event is called the men's mistral, a series of windsurfing races. It is not soccer or basketball or track. Just a 28-year-old man on the water in an obscure event, quenching a nation's thirst.

The anthem is called ``Hatikvah.'' The Hope. It had never been played at the Olympics.

But now it has.

The United States has 883 gold medals. Israel has made a statement with one.

``He is only the messenger,'' said girlfriend Michal Beleg.

The president of Israel called afterward. The prime minister. The great and the small, all caught up in the moment.

``It is a fulfillment,'' said Ram Aviram, Israel's ambassador to Greece. ``(Munich) is part of history. We remember, we honor. But at the same time, we continue on.

``You had a whole nation running after him and blowing with their mouths to have wind in his sails. You didn't see that on television. But it happened.''

When Fridman returns to Israel, he knows where he must go. He will take his medal to the memorial site for the 11 Olympians.

``He told us ... he wants to do that more than anything else,'' said sailing team leader Yehuda Maayhem. ``It is his dream.''

But what could Fridman have been thinking Wednesday, as the wave of joy rolled toward him?

``That I made so many people happy,'' he said later.

But not everyone. The Olympics will end, the anguish of the Mideast will go on. These games also included an Iranian apparently dropping out of judo rather than compete against an Israeli.

``This is not going to change the Mideast,'' Gilady said. ``I doubt that he's going to get a call from Arafat.''

But if only it could. Fridman wants his medal to have a legacy of many things - an end to the killing among them.

``Fighting should start in the water,'' he said. ``If you want to fight someone, fight them in sports. This is our job as an athlete, to show the other side of Israelis. All the people I know want peace.

``One of my best friends is Turkish. I call him my Muslim brother. He calls me his Jewish brother. In sailing, we are all friends.''

He can speak of such things now, and people might listen. He is a gold medalist. He held it his hands Wednesday, as the people flooded around, in a moment too important not to share.