Olympic swimmer Guy Barnea shared a chaotic moment from his morning swim at a Tel Aviv pool on Friday during his morning swim.
In the video, whistles of lifeguards mix with air sirens and instructions over a loud speaker as patrons run from the pool to a parking garage nearby seeking shelter.
In his own words:
“Gordon pool is a public pool on the beach of Tel Aviv and a sanctuary for myself and thousands of swimmers of all ages and levels, some are +80 years old , and been swimming there everyday for 30 years.
Since the Hamas massacre on Oct 7th that started the war everything was closed and we were extremely busy volunteering and helping everywhere.
Being able to workout is a huge privilege these days in Israel, but at the same time extremely important for our mental health.
Today I went for the first swim since Oct 7th, and mid-swim the sirens indicating Hamas missiles attack targeting Tel Aviv went off. As there’s no safe shelter near the pool, we ran to the nearest parking garage.
There was a direct hit in an apt building in Tel Aviv with 4 injured people and luckily no casualties [deaths] this time.
This is just 1 example of our reality these days.”
Friday is typically an off day for most people in Israel, where the standard work week is Sunday-Thursday.
“Everybody is off work and people of all ages, level, (and religions!) swim here together,” Barnea said.
Barnea, 36, represented Israel at the 2008 Summer Olympics. He is a three-time European Championship medalist, all in the 50 backstroke, and the 2009 Maccabiah Games champion in the 100 backstroke.
When asked about what is happening with elite swimming in Israel right now, Barnea said that the situation is not good.
“The situation is bad, there’s practically no club swimming right now in Israel.
Clubs can’t run practices, since most of them don’t have a safe shelter nearby so they don’t have permission / or they don’t want to risk it since almost all cities are under Hamas missiles attacks daily.
All swimmers from the south near Gaza were evacuated from their homes – probably for at least 6 months. Some of them are actual survivors of the massacre, like Amir ‘fish’ Cohen, our Israeli national Cadets team coach (who I know personally since I was a young swimmer), who managed to make it out alive after 26 hours in his home’s shelter, during the Hamas attack that murdered people in his kibbutz.
Now also some clubs from the north had to make their way towards the center of the country so they can get some pool time, but it’s not regular and not all of them managed to do it. The north border get hit from Hezbollah (cross-border fire from Lebanon has been reported).
There are very few swimmers from our elite national team who’re able to somewhat train, which also depends on the day and the situation. They train in Wingate pool (where worlds Juniors were held not long ago). Wingate has a shelter underneath the pool.
Last thing, it’s very hard to get security approvals these days for Israeli athletes to fly to compete abroad, since there are many threats to hurt Israelis, that’s why our swimmers couldn’t fly to compete in Budapest World Cup leg.
According to Tom Rushton, who coaches most of Israel’s elite swimmers out of their national training center, most of the country’s top swimmers are already outside of the country. He says that Israeli swimmers outside of the country have been advised by the federation to stay out of the country for now, because they might not be able to leave again if they come back.
Rushton has a group currently training in the Czech Republic that includes Hong Kong swimming star Siobhan Haughey as well as Anastasia Gorbenko and other top Israeli swimmers. He says a handful of athletes and staff who were planning to travel to the World Cup in Budapest didn’t wind up attending, confirming Barnea’s information, because of travel restrictions.
Rushton is currently training Anastasia Gorbenko and Daria Golovaty along with Simona Kubova of the Czech Republic at a base in Czechia. Rushton, who was back in Israel briefly between Asian Games and the World Cup, said that his plan was to go to a training camp in Flagstaff, Arizona, USA even before the war began, and that he expects most of the Israeli’s based internationally (including a large contingent of them based at colleges in the United States) to compete at the US Open.
As most in the region are in these uncertain times, Rushton indicated that he wasn’t sure about what would happen with Israel swimmers, and that much depends on how the war with Gaza proceeds.
Israel has indicated that they won’t send a team to Qatar for the World Championships in February. Qatar has been linked to Hamas.
Barnea swam collegiately at Cal in the United States, where he was a member of Cal’s 2011 NCAA Champion team, swimming legs of the title-winning 200 free, 200 medley, and 400 medley relay teams. Individually, he was 3rd that year in the 100 backstroke in 46.23.
Since the fighting began three weeks ago, there have been thousands of Palestinians and Israelis killed, with air and missile strikes continuing on both sides of the border. World Aquatics moved the final stop of the Open Water World Cup Series from Eilat, Israel to Funchal, Portugal amid the ongoing war between Israel and Palestine. World Aquatics did not make a broader statement on the ongoing war, referring to the war as “recent occurrences in Israel.”
I don’t take the safety I have in America for granted.
I just wanna take a step aside and point out the peculiar absurdity of a place on earth where on one hand living standards, quality of life, and amenities are right on par with Western Europe and the USA but also this is a reality.
There’s not potable water in Gaza. Hasn’t been for a long time, but it’s real dire now.
Hi Steve – you know what would have fixed it? If Hamas (the body who controls Gaza) would use their capital to invest in their civilians and not in terror.
Ah, so that’s how it works! They just have two levers they can pull, one that says “build infrastructure” and one that says “do terror” and they pulled The Terror Lever.
I sure hope someone got fired for that blunder.
Yes, that’s actually how it works. Hamas uses the majority of its proceeds to make their heads filthy rich and invest billions in terror. Are you aware of their terror tunnel infrastructure? Also google Ismail Haniyeh net works. Let me tell you, he didn’t make that fortune from selling a start-up company to Microsoft…
Right because the water pipes were converted to rockets and sent to blow up a pool
Perhaps electing a terrorist organization to lead you wasn’t such a good idea in hindsight.
this is such a bad argument considering half of the population wasn’t alive when the last election happened, but either way I don’t see why everyone always pushes it as the Palestinians responsibility to elect non terrorist government when the IDF causes many times as much carnage
What sort of conditions do you think led to that?
Gaza gets 11% of its water from Israel and there are desalination plants in Gaza that can help with the rest. The issue is the pipes that were converted into rockets and used for the tunnels.
Hey guys, my name is Steve Nolan, I live in my comfy house in Suburbia, but I know exactly what’s happening in Gaza at the moment! It ain’t cool and I blame Israel for that on a swimming website! Look how progressive I am.
So you think it’s “cool” what’s happening in Gaza right now. And think it’s “weird” that I would potentially think otherwise.
I didn’t assign blame anywhere, did I? And do you have some sort of “proofs” that there is plenty of potable water in Gaza? Not sure what you’re so disagreeable about otherwise, then.
And the hell are you talking about blaming a post about Israel “on a swimming website” on me? I didn’t publish this, I just wrote a comment. And then you did, too.
What’s your name? You know mine, and want to pretend to know me. Let me pretend to know you.
Want water? Release the hostages and don’t use the pipes to build rockets.
This is insane! Hard to understand why anyone would target to kill as many civilians as possible. Hamas is a terror organization like we’ve never seen before.
And somehow it’s become cool on college campuses to be pro Hamas and anti Israel. It’s mind boggling.
I can see how people got there. Israel has treated Palestinians like garbage for years.
I don’t know why we can’t just come to the conclusion that both Israel and Hamas have behaved poorly, and focus on ‘solving the problem’ rather than ‘debating blame.’ Debating blame only benefits the bullsh** leadership on both sides, who have all behaved poorly.
It’s like y’all forgot that nobody liked Netanyahu before this war, that he’s under investigation for corruption, and that he refused to engage with Palestine basically forever.
Just because Hamas did really terrible, unforgiveable things doesn’t mean that what Israel has done is right or justified.
Yes, you can see how “people got there”, “there” being mass murder of civilians including women, children, babies. Yes, you can see that if you lack a moral compass.
No one is pro hamas, stop attacking strawmen.
Yes, it is cool to be anti-Israel. They’ve already killed over 6000 Palestinians since October 7, the vast vast majority of which are innocent and many of which are children. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/world/middleeast/gaza-death-toll-israel.html
How many Japanese civilians died in the retaliation bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? How many Afghan civilians died in retaliation for 9/11?
That’s how wars work sadly, but you can only blame the group who initiated the terror on the world. In this case there’s Hamas who targeted killing and kidnapping as many Israelis as possible and then there’s Israel who is retaliating now to make sure it never happens again.
Please tell me how the examples above are any different?
I am loving that billionaires are pulling all their funding at liberal schools.
welcome to the reality of the millions in Ukraine
It shouldn’t be a competition of who is suffering more. People are suffering – Israel, Palestine, Ukraine and many, many other places in the world. We should concentrate on eliminating that… period. Not debate on who is worse off. All this violence and suffering is equally horrifying. This particular article is about Israel. People in Israel were hit hard by the attack. It’s bad and it’s okay to acknowedlge that. Doesn’t mean the writer or the readers don’t recognize that it’s bad elsewhere, too.
I guess you’ve never heard of the Russians (Stalin, Lenin etc.) and the Chinese (Mao) and WW2 Germans. These folks killed over 60 million people.
Hamas is a horrible group of people too, so I’m NOT defending what these animals are doing either.
Free Palestine from Hamas
So many wars cropping up right now, so sad.