Israel Names 14 Pool Swimmers, 5 Open Water Swimmers to 2023 Worlds Roster

Israel has confirmed a 14-swimmer pool roster and 5-swimmer open water roster for the 2023 World Aquatics Championships.

This is a same-sized roster as last year’s 14 pool swimmer roster, which includes an expansion in the final days before the entry deadline. That happened at the Sette Colli Trophy in late June in Italy, where Stanford-trained Ron Polonsky swam 2:00.04 in the 200 IM to clear the World Championship qualifying standard.

He joins his sister, Leah, and ten other Israeli pool swimmers heading to Fukuoka for the World Championships from July 14-30, 2023.

That list includes Tomer Frankel (Indiana) and Bar Soloveytchik (Minnesota), two other American-trained swimmers, who both set Israeli Records at the recent Israeli Championships. Frankel swam 51.14 in the 100 fly, and Soloveytchik set a new mark in the 400 free with a 3:48.66.

All but two of the team’s male swimmers, Meiron Cheruti and David Gerchik, trains or has trained in the United States’ collegiate system, and Gerchik is scheduled to head to Northwestern in the fall. Three members of the women’s team, Leah Polonsky (Cal), Ayla Spitz (Cal, transferring to Northwestern) and Aviv Barzelay (Texas A&M) are products of the NCAA.

The women’s team is led by Anastasia Gorbenko, the country’s most famous swimmer who finished 5th at last year’s World Championships in the 200 IM. A versatile swimmer with the ability to swim well in all four strokes, Gorbenko is running into a brutal field in that 200 IM that includes Canadian teen Summer McIntosh, Americans Kate Douglass and Alex Walsh, and Australia’s Kaylee McKeown.

She is joined by the upstart 17-year-old Daria Golovati, who set the Israeli National Record in the 400 free at the Israel Championships earlier this year in 4:11.40.

The open water squad is led by Eva Fabian, who finished 17th in the women’s 5k and 19th in the women’s 10k at last year’s World Championships. Fabian represented the US, where she was born, at several international meets from 2009 through 2015 before immigrating to Israel and becoming a citizen in 2017. That included a bronze medal at the 2013 World Championships in the 25k, a gold medal at the 2010 World Open Water Championships in the 5k, and a gold medal at the 2015 Pan American Games in the 10k.

The men’s team is led by Matan Roditi, who was 4th in the 10km race at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics – the closest the country has come to an Olympic medal in swimming. He scratched the 10k at last year’s World Championships.

The open water team recently had at the Lyttos Beach Hotel on the island of Crete.

Israel has never medaled at the World Aquatics Championships in swimming or any other discipline; Gorbenko’s 5th-place finish was the country’s best-ever result by a swimmer.

Men’s Pool Roster

• Gal Cohen Groumi (Michigan)
• Bar Soloveytchik (Minnesota)
• Tomer Frankel (Indiana)
• Ron Polonsky (Stanford)
• David Gerchik (Northwestern commit for 2023)
• Denis Loktev (Louisville)
• Daniel Namir (Arizona)
• Michael Laitarovsky (South Carolina)
• Meiron Cheruti

Women’s Pool Roster

• Anastasia Gorbenko
• Aviv Barzelay (Texas A&M)
• Ayla Spitz (Cal, transferring to Northwestern)
• Leah Polonsky (Cal)
• Daria Golovati

Men’s Open Water Roster

• Matan Roditi
• Yonatan Ahdot
• Ziv Cohen

Women’s Open Water Roster

• Eva Fabian (Yale)
• Orin Gavlan