AJ Edelman ’14 to represent Israel at the 2018 Winter Olympics
Former member of Engineers Hockey will compete in skeleton at the Olympics in South Korea
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Earlier this month, it was announced that MIT alumnus Adam “AJ” Edelman, Class of 2014, would participate in the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in skeleton at Pyeongchang, South Korea. The sport of skeleton, named due to the appearance of its characteristic sled, is a winter sliding sport in which a person rides a sleigh down a frozen track while lying face down. It is an individual sport that Edelman has been interested in since his time after MIT.
While at the ’tute, Edelman, a Boston native, was on the Engineers’ hockey team and was the first shomer-shabbat player in program history. He was also briefly a staff columnist for The Tech. After graduating with a degree in Mechanical Engineering (with a concentration in management applications of MechE), he took to bodybuilding and performed at a high level at the 2014 Annapolis Drug-free Bodybuilding Championships. It was after this brief stint that he took to skeleton and he has not looked back since.
Edelman, now nicknamed “The Hebrew Hammer,” is a representative of the country of Israel and in his career on the Israeli team that started in 2014, he has won four national titles and is the owner of multiple records at the tracks he has raced in recently.
Edelman has focused a lot on spreading the joy of sports amongst his community members ever since he was in grade school. He advocates the meaning of athletics as a way to encourage those with similar heritage to pursue their dreams and has made it a personal goal to “inspire more Jewish and Israeli participation in sport, and to use the Olympics as a springboard to launch a foundation to aid Jewish and Israeli athletes in their athletic pursuits.”