Nations participating 34 Opening city Ramat Gan | Athletes participating 3450 Main venue National Stadium | |
Debuting countries Bermuda
Puerto Rico
New Zealand Opening ceremony Torch lit by Tal Brody[1] | ||
The 1981 11th Maccabiah Games brought 3,450 athletes to Israel from 30 nations.
The 30-sports menu included rugby union, sailing and softball for the first time.
New facilities for squash, wrestling, karate, and judo were introduced.
Mitch Gaylord, gymnastics, won 6 gold medals; he later went on to win Olympic gold.
Also, tennis players Brad Gilbert and Andrea Leand earned gold medals,[2] and Shlomo Glickstein won the men's singles in tennis, the first Israeli to win a Maccabiah tennis championship.
Mark Berger, who three years later was to go on to win a silver medal in the Olympics, won a gold medal in judo. David Blatt won a gold medal with Team USA in basketball.
In track and field, James Espir of Great Britain, who earlier that year had run a mile in 3 minutes 56.7 seconds, thereby becoming the fastest Jewish miler ever, won the 1500 metres and 5000 metres gold medals on successive days. At the Games, Maya Kalle-Bentzur of Israel won the gold medal in the women's long jump.
Participating Communities
The number in parentheses indicates the number of participants that community contributed.