JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel will send its largest delegation ever for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
Team Israel will include about 85 athletes in 18 sports for the quadrennial event in July, NoCamels first reported.
Israeli athletes will compete for the first time in equestrian show jumping and surfing. Other sports include rhythmic and artistic gymnastics, cycling, sailing and shooting.
“This is a crazy number by Israeli standards,” Vered Buskila, vice president of the Olympic Committee of Israel, told NoCamels last week in an interview. “That’s something that we never thought could happen in the near future.”
Two dozen of the participants make up the national baseball team, which last month became the second of six teams to qualify.
Israel has won nine Olympic medals since it first began competing in 1952, starting with Yael Arad’s silver in judo in 1992.
