Shahar Zubari

Shahar Zubari ( _he. שחר צוברי, "Shahar Tzuberi"; born September 1, 1986) is an Israeli windsurfer and Olympic bronze medalist, surfing in the "Neil Pryde" discipline. He was born in Eilat, Israel.

Early career

Zubari, an Eilat native, began surfing at the young age of 7 with the encouragement of his father. Success soon followed, and after winning a number of local surfing competitions Zubari began training professionally. His first achievement was a silver medal finish in the 2000 Windsurfing World Championships for boys. With the Olympics in mind, Zubari began mastering the Mistral windsurfer (which was the windsurfer model used in the Olympic Games at the time). In 2002, Zubari won the under-17 World Championships, and in 2004, he won the silver medal in the Youth World Championships held in Bulgaria.

RS:X Era

In 2004, the ISAF decided to replace the Olympic windsurfing discipline model from the Mistral surfboard to the "Neil Pryde" surfboard. The majority of Olympic windsurfers found it hard to adjust to the new model, as they were already used to years of sailing on the Mistral. However, younger surfers, such as Zubari, had a chance to close the gaps in terms of professionalism and catch up with the veteran windsurfers.

In the beginning of 2006, in the first ever Israeli windsurfing competition held using the RS:X model, Zubari was victorious and finished first, while two-time Israeli Olympic medalist Gal Fridman only managed a 4th place finish. This eventually led to the replacement of Fridman with Zubari in the national Israeli team for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.

Furthermore, Zubari's local dominance in the field became absolute with more significant international results:
* 2007 - Pre-Olympic championship silver medal finish in France.
* 2007 - 6th place finish in the European Championships held in Cyprus.
* 2007 - 8th place finish in the World Championships held in Portugal.

The latter accomplishment sealed the deal for Zubari, finally earning him a place in the national Israeli Olympic Team for the 2008 Olympics. In the beginning of 2008, Zubari achieved another impressive result, winning the bronze medal in the World Championships held in New Zealand.

Because of his physique and years of training in the Gulf of Eilat area, Zubari's success in competitions is mainly maintained when sea winds are weak to medium (up to 12 knots). Evidence of this is his weak performance in a tournament held in Italy during 2007, where very strong winds resulted in his being placed 34th.

Beijing 2008

Zubari entered the 2008 Olympic Games under the shadow of Gal Fridman, a two-time Olympic medalist for Israel. He was ranked outside the top 10 coming into the tournament, but was surprisingly ranked in an overall 1st place after the first 4 (of the total 11) events, finishing 1st and 3rd respectively. But in the following 4 events, Zubari's best finish was a 6th place, in between 17th, 18th and 19th place finishes - results that certainly seemed to end his hopes of an Olympic medal.

In the next events, however, Zubari came back to win the 9th and placed 4th in the 10th event, thus re-entering the medal race as 4th place overall.

Just before the final medal race was about to start, Greek windsurfer Nikolaos Kaklamanakis, who was next to Zubari in the start line, was disqualified for an attempted head start. Zubari thought the judges disqualified him as well (in fact they did not), and decided to play it safe by "re-entering" the race and returned to the start line. By the time Zubari finally started surfing, he was approximately 1 minute behind the entire fleet.

Zubari had to place 4 places ahead of one of the top-3 surfers in order to win a medal and he accomplished just that by coming back from last place and finishing in an incredible 2nd place, and 3rd overall, while Great Britain's Nick Dempsey lost his medal by placing 7th - an overall 4th place finish. [Staff. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/sailing/7571689.stm "Dempsey misses windsurfing medal"] , "BBC Sports", August 20, 2008. Accessed September 10, 2008.]

Zubari's results were:

("Notes:" the worst race score is omitted. The medal race score is doubled.)

Controversy

After the Beijing Olympics, Zubari made a number of offensive comments about his Chinese hosts in an interview with "Yediot Ahronot", including what the "Associated Press" described as a "scatological expletive" and criticizing Chinese traditions, speech and food, such as "After a month and a half I couldn't look at Chinese people any more", "Their traditions are bizarre and even their speech is weird".

Zubari later released an apology, and the Israeli Sport and Culture Minister condemned Zubari's remarks to the Chinese Ambassador. which he called "despicable", "do not reflect the views of the Israeli people toward the Chinese people," [via Associated Press. [http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/1155262,israel091008.article "Israel apologizes for athlete's insult of China"] , "Chicago Sun-Times", September 10, 2008. Accessed September 10, 2008.]

Achievements

Personal life

Zubari, currently serving his obligatory army period, received an "Athlete of Excellence" status from IDF, allowing him to compete in international competitions. He's stationed in a naval army base in Eilat, his hometown.

References

External links

* [http://www.shaharzubari.com Official Website]