Yaël Arad always calls her “Fleury”. The Israeli judoka (56 years old) remembers as if it were yesterday this moment on the tatamis that will forever bind her to France. She had found herself face to face, in the final of the Barcelona 1992 Games, with Catherine Fleury-Vachon (- 61 kg). Arad had lost by decision of the referees (no golden score at the time), but the two women had made history: the Frenchwoman became the first Olympic champion in her discipline; her opponent offered Israel, forty years after its first participation in the Olympics, its first Olympic medal.
