Polo to Yachting
by the Encyclopedia Judaica (CD-ROM Edition)
Polo
A favorite sport of the Rothschild banking family since the 1890s, they helped
popularize polo in Austria and France. Leading Rothschild players were Baron
Louis (1882-1954), Austria; Barons Edouard Alphonse James (1869-1949), Robert
(1880-1946), and Elie (1917- ), France and Evelyn (1931- ), Great Britain. American
players included William Littauer (1865-1953); the Fleischmann brothers, Julius
(1872-1925) and Max (1877-1951); Robert Lehman (1891-1969); Adam Gimbel (1893-1969);
Samuel Cohen (1896-1965), and John M. Schiff (1904-1987).
Roller Skating
American Scott Cohen, who won the world free skating championships in 1985,
1986, 1989, and 1990, became the first singles skater to win the title four
times. Cohen also won a Pan American Games silver medal in 1987.
Rowing
In 1858 Britain's Sir Archibald Levin Smith (1836-1901) rowed in the Cambridge
University crew that defeated Oxford and triumphed in the Henley Royal Regatta.
During the 1870s Henry Altman (1854-1911), Isaac N. Seligman (1856-1917), and
Lucius Littauer were engaged in collegiate rowing in the United States. Seligman
rowed at Columbia, Littauer at Harvard, and Altman helped to establish the sport
at Cornell University. The Lone Star Boat Club of New York City, America's first
Jewish rowing group, was organized in 1887. Samuel G. Sterne was its president.
In Olympic competition, Allen P. Rosenberg (1931- ) coached the 1964 American rowing team to a pair of victories. As a coxswain, Rosenberg won a gold medal in the 1955 Pan-American Games. Between 1963 and 1966 Donald Spero (1939- ) of the United States won seven national, two Canadian, and the 1966 world championship, in single-sculls. He was an Olympic finalist in 1964 and winner of the Diamond Sculls in Britain's Henley Royal Regatta in 1965. Spero and Rosenberg are members of the Helms Rowing Hall of Fame. Frederic Lane stroked the University of Pennsylvania to victory in the Grand Challenge Cup of England's Royal Henley Regatta in 1955, to defeat a Soviet crew. George Hermann, Herbert Senoff James Kreis, Jerry Winkelstein, James Fuhrman (1943- ), and Lawrence Gluckman (1946- ) were Pan-American Games gold medalists.
Allen Rosenberg coached and David Weinberg was coxswain of the American crew that won the 1974 eight-oared heavyweight race at the World Championships.
Seth Bauer won an Olympic Games bronze medal in 1988. Other American participants in the 1988 Olympic Games were Sherri Cassuto and Jon Fish. Bauer, Fish, and Cassuto won Pan American Games and World Championships medals between 1985 and 1991.
Pablo Bulgach of Argentina and Betsy Kimmel, U.S., won Pan American Games gold medals in 1987 and 1991.
Rugby
John E. Raphael (1882-1917) represented England nine times in international
rugby competitions in 1902-06, and Bethel Solomons (1885-1965), later a leading
gynecologist, played for Ireland ten times in 1908-10. Aaron ("Okey") Geffin
of S. Africa was the hero of the 1949 test series victory over New Zealand.
Samuel Goodman was the manager of the United States Olympic gold medal teams
in 1920 and 1924. Australia's Albert A. Rosenfeld (1885- ) and Britain's Lewis
Harris were outstanding Rugby League players. Rosenfeld appeared in the first
test series between England and Australia in 1909, and during the 1913-14 season
he scored a record 80 tries for Huddersfield in the Northern Rugby Football
League. Harris was a member of the Hull Kingston Rovers when they won the Challenge
Cup in 1925 and were Northern Rugby Football League champions in 1921 and 1923.
Shooting
In 1868 Philo Jacoby (1837-1922) won the Berlin shooting championship as the
representative of the American Sharpshooters Association of New York. During
the next 30 years Jacoby made many trips to Europe, where he triumphed in numerous
shooting tournaments. In 1876 he captained the California team that won the
world shooting championship at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. For
many years he was editor and publisher of The Hebrew, one of the first Jewish
newspapers in San Francisco. Among outstanding U.S.S.R. modern shooters were
Olympic medalists Lev Vainshtein, 1952; Allan Erdman, 1956; world champion Mikhail
Itkis, 1958; and Larissa Gurvich, 1967.
In 1975 Larissa Gurvich of the U. S. S. R. won the European and World skeet championships. Joelle Fefer of Canada won three Pan American Games medals in 1983 and 1987. Thomas Bernstein, a member of the Norwegian national team, won the U.S. national collegiate (NCAA) rifle championship 20in 1988.
Squash Racquets & Racquetball
Victor Niederhoffer won United States squash racquets championships in 1972-75,
and the Canadian and North American Open titles in 1975. In 1977 Selwyn Machet
won the South African amateur championship. American Stuart Goldstein won the
World professional title in 1978.
In racquetball Martin Hogen won the United States championship in 1978, and his second and third national professional racquetball titles in 1979 and 1980. Kathy May Teacher won the United States women's national paddle tennis championship in 1980.
Surfing
South African Shaun Tomson won the 1975 American Championship Cup and the World
professional title in 1977; he remained among the world's best surfers in 1985.
After a decade of competition Tomson had recorded the most victories in the
Association of Surfing Professionals world tour.
Table Tennis
Table tennis was organized as a modern sport in the 1920s. It proved a very
popular game with Jews and several became world champions. The Honorable Ivor
Montagu (1904- ) served as president of the English or International Table Tennis
Federation from 1922 to 1967. His mother, Lady Swaythling (1879-1965), was also
president of the English Table Tennis Federation and in 1926 donated the men's
world team cup which bears her name. M. Cohen of Great Britain won the second
English open championship in 1922, and Marcus Schussheim of the United States
was the first American champion in 1931. Dr. Roland Jacobi of Hungary triumphed
in men's singles at the initial world championship in 1927. Other world champions
in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles were Hungarian's Zoltan Mechlovitz; Gyozo
Viktor Barna (1911-1972), who won 22 world titles including five singles championships;
Richard Bergmann (1919-1970), an Austrian who won four singles titles; Alfred
Liebster, Austria, and Angelica Rozeanu (1921- ), Rumania; the sisters Thelma
Thall and Leah Thall Neuberger, United States; and Svetlana Grinberg, U.S.S.R.
Ivor Montagu of Great Britain, who became the first chairman of the Table Tennis International Federation and held the post for over 40 years, died in 1984.
Track-and-Field
Modern track-and-field had its beginnings in England in the 1850s and 1860s.
An early American runner was Lipman Pike, the professional baseball player.
Pike ran 100-yards against a Canadian Indian on the Capitoline Grounds in Brooklyn,
New York, in 1869 and four years later became the Maryland State 100-yard champion.
Daniel Stern (1849-1923) began to race-walk in 1873 and three years later won
the one-and three-mile events at the first American track-and-field championships.
He was an early member and officer of the New York Athletic Club and served
on the committee charged with building the first cinder track in the United
States. In 1875 Philo Jacoby (1837-1922) participated in the San Francisco Olympic
Club's first outdoor athletic games. Victor E. Schifferstein (1863- ) represented
the same California club when he won the national long-jump championship in
1888. Earlier that year Schifferstein ran 100 yards in ten seconds to equal
the world record of the time. The greatest American runner of the 19th century
was Lawrence ("Lon") Myers. He set world records in the 440- and 880-yard runs
and won American, Canadian, and British national championships in 1879-85. In
1900 Myer Prinstein (1880-1925) of the United States became the first Jewish
medalist in Olympic track-and-field competition. He won the triple jump and
placed second in the long jump. Earlier that year Prinstein had established
a new world mark of 24 feet, 7.25 inches in the long jump. He repeated his Olympic
triple-jump victory in 1904 and added a gold medal in the long jump. In 1906,
Prinstein won another gold medal in Athens in the long jump in what was then
considered the Olympic Games but the 1906 competition was ruled not to have
been an Olympiad some 50 years later. Michael Spring (d. 1970) won the Boston
marathon race in 1904. Abel Kiviat (1892- ) set a world record for 1500 meters
in 1912. England's most famous track star was Harold Abrahams who won the 100
meters race at the 1924 Olympic games; and his brother Sir Sydney Abrahams also
represented Britain at the Olympic Games. Harold Abrahams in 1969 became chairman
of the British Amateur Athletic Board. Fanny ("Bobbie") Rosenfeld (1905-1969)
in addition to starring in ice hockey, basketball, and softball, tied the women's
world record for the 100-yard dash in 1925, excelled at the Olympics in 1928,
and was hailed by the Canadian press as her country's "outstanding woman athlete
of the half-century." Jews were also medalists in European, British Commonwealth
and Empire, Pan-American, and Asian Games.
Irena Kirszenstein-Szewinska of Poland added to her Olympic medal collection in 1972 with a bronze medal in the 200-meter run and a gold medal in the 400-meter run in 1976. In 1974 she became the first woman to better 50 seconds in the 400. She was inducted into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame in 1992. Faina Melnik-Velva of the U.S.S.R. won an Olympic gold medal in the discus throw in 1972.
Abigail (Abby) Hoffman of Canada won a Pan-American Games gold medal in the 800-meter run in 1971 and silver and bronze medals in the 1975 Pan-American Games. In 1974 Y.C. Yohanna of India won the long jump event and set an Asian record in the Asian Games.
Israeli-born Boris (Dov) Djerassi won the United States national hammer throw in 1975 and 1978, and Ron Wayne won the U.S. national marathon championship in 1974.
Svyetlana Krachevskya of the U.S.S.R. won a 1979 bronze medal in the World Cup and a silver medal in the 1980 Olympic Games in the shot-put.
American Pincus (Pinky) Sober, chairman of the International Amateur Federation's technical committee and longtime Madison Square Garden track announcer, died in 1980.
In 1991 another Olympian, America's Abel Kiviat, a 1912 silver medalist, died at the age of 99. Kiviat set a world 1500-meter record in the same Olympic year.
In 1992 Mel Rosen served as the U.S. men's Olympic coach, and Yevgeniy Krasnov of Israel placed eighth in the Olympic pole vault competition.
American Ken Flax won medals in the World University Games in 1989 and 1991 (gold) and was named the ninth ranked hammer thrower in the world in 1991.
Fred Lebow, president of the New York Road Runners Club (the largest American club of its kind) and founder and director of the New York Marathon and the Fifth Avenue Mile, ran in his own marathon in 1992, only two years after he was diagnosed with cancer and given just months to live. It was Lebow's first marathon run in four years.
Volleyball
Jews have also had a prominent part in volleyball. Sidney Nachlas' (1920- )
achievements brought him election to the Helms Volleyball Hall of Fame. Harlan
Cohen (1934- ) coached the American women's Olympic team in 1968. In 1956 Eugene
Sleznick (1930- ) became the first American to win a place on the All-World
team.
Doug Beal and Israel's Arie Selinger coached the U.S. Olympic men's and women's teams to gold and silver medals in 1984. They were the first medals ever won by American teams in Olympic competition.
In 1992 Selinger coached the Netherlands men to an Olympic silver medal. Selinger's son Arbital was a member of the Dutch team. Other Olympic Games medalists were Bernard Rajzman, Brazil, silver, 1984, and Dan Greenbaum, U.S, bronze, 1992.
Water Skiing
David Nations pioneered this sport in Great Britain. He founded the British
Water Ski Federation in 1951 and was the national overall champion in 1955-56.
Weightlifting
Britain's Edward Lawrence Levy (1851-1932) was among the first to engage in
amateur weightlifting in the 19th century. He won the first English and international
competitions in 1891, and five years later served as a weightlifting judge at
the first modern Olympic Games. There have been many Olympic weightlighting
medalists (see Olympics). Jews also engaged in the European, Commonwealth, Empire,
and Pan-American Games. Oscar State (1911- ) of Great Britain organized the
weightlifting competitions at the Olympic Games in 1948 and 1956, and beginning
in 1960, has served as secretary of the International Weightlifting Federation.
David A. Matlin, a weightlifting official, served as the 33rd president of the
Amateur Athletic Union of the United States in 1967-68.
David Rigert of the U.S.S.R. won a 1976 Olympic gold medal in the 198-pound division. Commonwealth Games medalists were Terrance (Terry) Perdue, England (bronze), 1974, and Ivan Katz, Australia (silver), 1978.
Grigory Novak, U.S.S.R world champion in 1946 and 1952 Olympic silver medalist, died in 1980.
David Lowenstein of Australia won a Commonwealth Games silver medal in 1986, and Giselle Shepatin and Rachel Silverman won silver medals for the U.S. in the Women's International Weightlifting Tournaments in 1985 and 1987. Allon Kirschner of Israel won a gold medal in the World Powerlifting Championships in 1989.
Winter Sports
In 1900-20 Cecil Hart pioneered amateur ice hockey in Canada. He entered the
professional game in 1921 and became a successful coach with the Montreal Canadians.
Samuel E. Lichtenhein (1871-1936) owned the Montreal Wanders hockey team (National
Hockey Association) in 1911-18. Americans who owned teams in the National Hockey
League included Sidney Solomon Jr. and Sidney Solomon III of the St. Louis Blues
and Edward M. Snider of the Philadelphia Flyers. In 1964 the all-Jewish Ha-Koah-Melbourne
team won the Australian ice hockey championship.
Louis Rubenstein of Canada introduced figure skating into North America in the late 1870s. He won many titles including the 1890 world championship in Russia. One of the organizers of the 1890 world competition was Baron Wolff of the St. Petersburg Skating Club. Rubenstein's brothers and sisters, Moses, Abraham, and Rachel, were all champion skaters. Lily Kronberger of Hungary was world figure skating champion in 1908-11. Joel Liberman (1883-1955) of the United States was founder of the New York Skating Club and an Olympic judge in 1928 and 1932. Benjamin Bagdade (1902- ) served as president of the American Skating Union in 1947-51 and was manager of the U.S. team at the 1948 Olympic Games. Irving Jaffee (1906-1981) is a member of the Speed Skating Hall of Fame. France's Alain Calmat, world figure skating champion (1965), was awarded the Legion d'Honneur by President de Gaulle.
Alice Damrosch Wolf Kiaer (1893-1967), a daughter of conductor Walter Damrosch, organized the first United States women's ski team in 1935 and the following year served as manager of the Olympic team. Richard Rubitscek of Austria won a gold medal in skiing in the 1933 European Maccabiah games and was a founder of the Arlberg ski method. American Hayley Wolff won a grand prix mogul gold medal in 1983 and a silver medal in the first world freestyle championship in 1986. Baron Robert de Rothschild (1880-1946) was the 1936 bobsledding champion of France, and in 1888 E. Cohen of the United States won the Grand National of Tobogganing at St. Moritz, Switzerland. The Montreal Curling Club numbered Canadian Jews among its members in the early 1800s. In 1965 Terry Braunstein skipped the Manitoba rink to the Canadian curling title.
Wrestling
There were a large number of medalists in wrestling at the Olympics. Jews also
won medals for wrestling in European, Commonwealth, Empire, and Pan-American
Games. Alfred Brull (1876-1944) of Hungary was president of the World Wrestling
League.
David Pruzansky of the United States (1971) and Howard Stupp of Canada (1975, 1979) won Pan-American Games gold medals. Keith Peache of England won a Commonwealth Games gold medal in 1974, and Victor Zilberman of the U.S.S.R. was a silver medalist at the European championship. Zilberman later competed for Canada.
Pan American Games medalists included Canada's Gary Kallos, sambo wrestling, gold, 1983; Andrew Borodow, free and Greco-Roman wrestling, two silvers, 1991; and also American Andrew Seras, Greco-Roman wrestling, gold, 1991. Seras and Borodow competed in the Olympic Games in 1988 and 1992.
Ralph (Ruffy) Silverstein, 1935 United States national collegiate champion and 1965 Maccabiah Games coach, died in 1980.
Yachting
In 1969 Israel won its first world title in any sport when Zefania Carmel and
Lydia Lazarov sailed to victory in the 420 class championship. In the United
States Emil ("Bus") Mosbacher, Jr., triumphed in American Cup races in 1962
and 1967, and his brother Robert Mosbacher (1927- ) won the world title in the
Dragon Class in 1969. Olympic medalists in yachting were Robert ("Buck") Halperin
(1908- ), United States, in 1960; and Valentin Mankin, U.S.S.R. in 1968 (gold).
The Levinson brothers, Alan and Harry, won a silver medal for the United States
in the 1967 Pan-American Games. Other yachtsmen included Baron Phillipe de Rothschild
(d. 1988) and Baron Edmund de Rothschild, France; and August Belmont (1816-1890),
Mortimer L. Schiff, and Walter N. Rothschild (1892-1960), United States.
In Olympic Games competition Valentin Mankin of the U.S.S.R. won gold (1972, 1980) and silver (1976) medals, and Daniel Cohan of the United States was a bronze medal winner in 1972.
American helmsman Larry Klein won four world's championships between 1983 and 1991. He was named U.S. Yachtsman of the Year in 1989.
[Jesse Harold Silver]
The Encyclopedia Judaica CD-ROM contains all the text of the original
16 Keter volumes, the eight yearbooks and the two Ten-Year update volumes. In
addition it includes many statistical updates and an interactive time-line.
The CD has over 2500 pictures, 100 maps, slideshows, audio, and fifteen minutes
of video.
Reflections | Profiles | News | About | Jews in Sports | Trivia | Links | Home