Swimmer becomes late addition to Olympic squad

Keren Siebner has become the 48th member of the Israeli Olympic delegation thanks to a registration mistake by the Belarusian national team.

The swimmer had missed out on Rio in heart-breaking fashion – missing out on qualifying for the 200m butterfly event by one-hundredth of a second. But a registration mistake by Belarus means Israel will now have a 4x100m freestyle relay team in Brazil, which will see Siebner teaming up alongside Andrea Murez, Zohar Shikler and Amit
Ivri – all of whom had already qualified for other individual events.

Set to take part in her first Olympic Games, the 26-year-old will be full of confidence, having won eight gold medals at last week’s national championships. Speaking about her late reprieve, she said: “This is just an amazing dream come true, it’s such good news, I’m still struggling to realise it’s happened.”

“This past month (and year…) has been like a roller-coaster ride, but I’m so happy the ending is going to be at the highest point I could ever dream of – the Olympic Games! I’m so overwhelmed!”