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Guy Sasson I Photo: Keren Isaacson

Asaf Yasur I Photo: Tom Bartov

Guy Sasson Discipline: wheelchair tennis Age: 44, married +4

vessel burst in her spinal cord and her dream was shattered. She went through a long process of rehabilitation in Italy, geared towards her specificities as a young athlete. “We found a place in Florence where the process was tailored to suit me as an athlete and not a regular disabled person. After two years of not being able to do what I loved, I could once again throw myself into sports and suddenly, my spark was back. I was able to start loving my life again”, she says. The Paris Games are her first Paralympics. Asaf Yasur Discipline: taekwondo Age: 22 Achievements: two-time world champion in 2021 and 2023, and 2024 European champion A week before celebrating his bar mitzva, Asaf Yasur lost both his hands after suffering injuries that required amputation following an electrocution accident. Thanks to his parents’ crowdfunding initiative he was able to be fitted with bionic

Achievements: this year’s Roland Garros champion, runner-up at this year’s Australian Open and at this year’s Wimbledon Championships Guy Sasson, member of the Ilan Sports Center Ramat Gan, suffered a spinal cord injury after a ski accident. “I saw how challenging wheelchair tennis was as a sport, and what heights you could reach and just fell in love with it”, says Sasson, who competed in the Tokyo 2020 Games in the ‘Open’ category. This year he will be competing in the ‘Quad’ category. Talia Eilat Discipline: para canoe Age: 25 Achievements: bronze medalist at the 2023 and 2024 European Championships Talia Eilat, member of Beit Halochem Tel Aviv, trains at the Daniel Rowing Center. Her dream was to become a professional dancer but in her senior year in high school, a blood

Talia Eilat I Photo: Tom Bartov

hands and his journey towards receiving those hands was made into a documentary by journalist Ben Shani in 2016. The film was first broadcast on television and is still today shown in schools and at army training courses. Nowadays Yasur doesn’t use his bionic hands nor any other prosthetics. He started doing survival and self-defense training but after publishing a post about his dream of becoming a Paralympian

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ATMOSPHERE AUGUST 2024