Alice on her way to wonderland

Alice Schlesinger remembers the moment when she thought it was all falling apart. It happened a year ago at the Grand Prix competition in China, just moments after she was ousted in the first round. She was forced to the sidelines, where she watched her main rival, Yarden Gerbi, clinch the silver medal – and the right to represent Israel in the Olympic Games.

London never seemed so far away. The Israeli judoka who competes in the 63-kg. weight class could barely conceal her heartbreak. “I cried a lot,” she recalls. “All of the tension that built up inside me suddenly erupted in one moment. I didn’t stop crying for a minute the entire way back to the hotel. I thought it was slipping through my fingers, that I blew my chance to get to the Olympics, even with all the effort I made, the difficult competitions. Everything went down the toilet. I felt as if I couldn’t cope, and that doesn’t often happen to me in life.”

How did you calm down-

“Pavel encouraged me and supported me. He said to me: ‘Alice, it’s just one competition. You’re sensitive. You need to get over it.’ A few hours later, I pulled myself together. I said, ‘That’s it, I’m going for it and giving it all I’ve got. Nobody is going to take London away from me. There’s no way.’”

London calling

“Pavel” is Pavel Musin, her coach and companion. They are in each other’s company 24 hours a day. Since that difficult day in China, Schlesinger has not let up. Last weekend, at the Judo Grand Prix in Dusseldorf, Germany, she clinched a spot on the Olympic team and assured herself a ticket to this summer’s games in London, where she will represent Israel.

Schlesinger, 24, uncorked a bottle of champagne and celebrated in her hotel room with close friends. Gerby, who won another medal at this competition, did not bother to come and congratulate Schlesinger. On top of that, the Israeli delegation was preoccupied with an incident in which a judoka was accused of stealing toothpaste from a local store. Perhaps this quiet, this lack of attention, is preferred by Schlesinger – who was anointed by the Olympic Committee as “Yael Arad’s heir apparent” and Israel’s best female hope to finally bring home a medal. Arad made history 20 years ago when she captured the silver medal in Barcelona.

“I’m trying to put this aside, not to take on too much or burden myself with things that are extraneous,” Schlesinger says. “As it is, all of this tension is not easy for me.”

Qualifying for London is Schlesinger’s confirmation that she has come full circle. It’s also a homecoming of sorts. Her mother, Miki, was born in England. In the 1970s, she was a soccer player in the English women’s youth league. After a brief career, she began to pursue a college degree. When she was 23 years old, she relocated to Kibbutz Afik on the Golan Heights.

As often seems to happen in such stories, she met Danny while working in the orchards. At the time, Danny was in the Garin Nahal program, an army-supported youth movement in which youngsters volunteer to aid communities and settlements. Miki converted to Judaism, the two married, and then gave had six children – five girls and one boy - within a span of eight years. Alice was third on the list.

“We lived in a 46-square-meter home in the Neve Amal neighborhood of Herzliya,” Miki recalls. “The house was always fast-paced. Everything was a competition: who could get dressed the quickest, who could finish their meals first. It was like one big race. To this day, we play backgammon, ping pong, or any other game as if it were the most important competition around. We could fight each other to the death.”

“When Alice was a little girl, she had unbelievable shoulders,” Miki says smiling.

All of the girls played sports. They trained in swimming, athletics, and, of course, judo.

“I actually started out swimming, but it was awfully boring,” Alice says. “I felt all alone in the water. Swimming from one end of the pool to the other just was not for me. At age 8, just before summer vacation, they took me to a judo practice in town and I was hooked. I learned one maneuver, a throw called osotogari. For the entire summer vacation, I abused my sisters with it. I would practice on them, and I would be calm only after I knocked them to the ground.”

Miki recounts how her daughter was never a typical teenager who would wear nail polish or carry a dainty purse. “She didn’t really connect with other girls in this way,” she said. “She didn’t stand in front of a mirror every day and put on makeup and she didn’t go see romantic movies. She was always very physical, and she would always have bruises after bumping into things. Perhaps this was what made her stronger and prepared her for judo. I would walk around town with her, and she would always bump into the light posts. She would also return home with injuries after falling from her bike. When she left the house, I wasn’t always sure how she would come back, but there was almost always some blow that she absorbed in school, always some altercation, everywhere.”

Romance in a shawarma

At age 14, Alice was accepted into a gifted athletes program at the Wingate Institute, Israel’s national center for physical education and sport, near Netanya. She also enrolled at Samurai-do Rishon Letzion, the club that was owned by the man who would later become her romantic partner. She felt that she was beginning to blossom and find her niche. She would spend days and nights practicing judo.

At home, her parents were strict with her. They did not allow her to stay out late on weekends because, as her mother said, real athletes need to get their sleep before morning competition.

“I was a kind of tomboy,” she said. “And I was always training. At the dorms in Wingate, I would train three times a day, but I enjoyed every minute of it.”

It was at Wingate that she met Pavel Musin, who immigrated to Israel from Ukraine in 1990. Musin was a successful and accomplished judoka in his own right. His achievements earned him the job of head coach of the women’s team. Five years ago, he separated from his first wife, with whom he shares an 8-year-old daughter. During his training sessions, competitions, and trips abroad, the coach and his pupil felt they were growing closer to one another.

“My heart was working outside of practice,” she says. “It wasn’t easy. Pavel was and still is my coach, and this created a situation that we needed to adjust to. On the mat during training sessions, he’s very tough with me. He’s very demanding. He’s my boss and I follow his instructions. On the other hand, we felt that we were very close even when I wasn’t training and competing, and we fell in love. We didn’t know what to do. How would we tell other people? What would we do given the fact that Pavel is the coach of the women’s team and I’m not only his trainee but also someone who is his companion? We hid our relationship for eight months, but it was a snowball that we couldn’t stop.”

“Thinking back, we regret not revealing the relationship earlier,” she says. “Our parents were the only ones who knew, and they gave their blessing wholeheartedly. We eventually told the Olympic Committee and the Judo Association. We breathed a sigh of relief when we finally let it out. Pavel left the women’s team but remained my coach.”

So how does it work? How do you manage to separate your personal lives from your professional lives when everything is so intertwined-

“It’s not easy. During training session, Pavel is the boss, but at home, there is total equality. We bought a nice house in Nes Tziona, we both cook, we both do the dishes, we go out, we act like a couple. There is the judo Alice, the Alice who practices a sport that is thought of as a masculine one, and there is Alice the woman. I’m not a huge feminist by any stretch of the imagination, but I always bear in mind that I am a woman. I really like to look and feel as feminine as possible, and of course I also like it when I get compliments about my appearance. When I leave the house, I make it a point to dress nice. Occasionally people stop me on the street and say: ‘Hey, you’re the athlete, aren’t you-’ That’s a lot of fun. Then I would say to Pavel: ‘They recognized me!’”

What do you do for fun-

“We don’t have time to take a real vacation as a couple. Our idea of fun is to devour a shawarma, especially after a long period of time when I keep a strict dietary regime during competitions abroad. We are engaged, but we just haven’t had the time to get married and we can’t even begin to think about a honeymoon when we have London on our minds. I’m not ready to have kids at the moment, because I’ll be abroad and they’ll grow up at home without a mother, and I refuse to have that happen. If I wasn’t in judo, we would already have kids. We’re together 24 hours a day, and I have someone to pour my heart to after a competition. The truth is that from an emotional standpoint, nobody is deprived. Pavel also has license to confide his feelings in me. Not everybody has this, and athletes can feel as if they are the loneliest people on earth.”

But isn’t it bothersome to bring your work home-

“That’s how it is with us. We got used to it.”

Pavel gazes at her with star-struck eyes. He sits beside her in a hotel in Germany, giddy at his good fortune. “I met Alice when she was 16 years old,” he recalls. “Aside from her immense talent, I was very impressed by her personality, especially her sensitivity. At times I say to her that she needs to separate her feelings between her world in judo and her world in life. I saw her feminine side, her depth. It’s not easy to make these transitions from the athletic world to the personal realm, and vice versa. It isn’t easy for me to yell at her, to really drive her in practices and competitions and then moments later to flip the switch. So we have a psychologist who accompanies us and who works with Alice on the psychological and competitive aspect of judo as well as our story.”

They are also aware that they share an economic household. Each victory and defeat directly impacts their bank accounts. “Yes, the fact that we are in essence economically dependent on my success doesn’t make it easier,” she says. “I receive tremendous support from the Olympic Committee and the Judo Assocation, and I believe that even if God forbid I fail in London, they will continue with me until the next Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.”

Me against the world

In 2004, Schlesinger captured the Cadet European Championship, marking her as a potential competitor for the Beijing Olympics. She managed to earn a spot on the Olympic team at nearly the last minute, when she won the bronze medal in the European Championship. In Beijing, she suffered a bad case of culture shock. Two quick losses sent her teary-eyed to a waiting room full of journalists who sought an explanation. She and Pavel said that the Olympics in China were just a warm-up for the real thing – the 2012 games in London. Yet Schlesinger could not foresee the bitter battle that she would have to wage against Yarden Gerby, who was also vying for a spot on the London squad.

“A number of people, especially in the press, took sides in the battle between them,” Miki says. “They were always pulling for Yarden and had quite a bit of criticism for Alice. I know how sensitive she is on the inside. They said nasty things about her, and they forgot that she is a human being with feelings. They think that she’s tough in person the way she is in judo, but I’m her mother. I know that she can cry because of any single thing that is said about her.”

“After the Olympics in China, they wrote: ‘Schlesinger ousted in a second.’ That was humiliating. I was incensed by this. Why denigrate an athlete who does all she can to succeed? Once I went over to [some reporters] and asked: ‘Tell me something. What is it that you want from my daughter? Why are you always writing things against her-’ They were just disgusting toward her, and I thought to myself: ‘Okay, she’s not a bad woman, she didn’t steal anything from anybody, she didn’t commit any crime.’ So they said to me: ‘Yarden is more accessible to us. We can catch her on Facebook, but not Alice.’ Is this a serious answer? And I know what my daughter is going through. They also know that she endured two serious car accidents in the last two years – once when she was driving, and the other time Pavel was behind the wheel.

“I prayed. I so wanted her to reach the Olympics. And I expected that Yael Arad would at least be neutral in this whole story. But she chose Yarden’s side, and she didn’t have anything nice to say about Alice. There was just one time when she wrote something to her on Facebook. You should see how Yarden’s Facebook page is loaded with messages after a competition, but with Alice – nothing.”

(Yael Arad said in response: “Alice is a wonderful athlete. She has a chance to win a medal, and I would be very proud and happy if that happened. It’s important to break this 20-year medal-less streak. I was the one who selected Alice when I headed a fund that donated money to young athletes, and I gave her support. All of the accusations being leveled against me are false.”)

See you in Rio de Janeiro

Schlesinger is not too keen on discussing her relationship with Gerby. “Naturally, when two athletes compete for one spot there is immediately a war,” she says. “There was a real war here to survive, and to win. On the day of the tournament in Germany, I got up at 5:00 a.m. Then I was weighed. Everything in the gym was stuffy. We got back to the hotel at 8:00 p.m., and I was just exhausted mentally. She got further in the competition in Germany than I did. She’s an outstanding athlete and things were tense and pressured, because if she didn’t get a medal then she would not get on the Olympic team. She didn’t congratulate me after I made it onto the team, but I’m not preoccupied by this. What bothers me more is that people forget that they’re dealing with a human being.”

One gets the impression that in the five months leading up to the Summer Games, we will be hearing a lot of comparisons between Schlesinger and Arad.

“I was 4 years old when Yael Arad won the medal,” she says. “She wasn’t my role model, and I didn’t admire her growing up as some people like to say. I’ve been in judo since I was 8 years old, and from my first practice I said that my dream was to win an Olympic medal. I had no idea what I was talking about. As a young girl, as someone who has gotten far in this profession, I gained a greater understanding of how big an accomplishment it was for Yael to win. It’s a great honor that people think of me as an heir apparent. I don’t feel as if I received support from her, but she doesn’t owe me anything. Sometimes we meet at various functions, but nothing more. I have other sources of support, both personal and financial. [Maccabi Haifa soccer team owner] Ya’akov Shahar helps me, as do other organizations.”

“All this talk about heir apparent, of being a medal hopeful, just adds pressure,” she said. “I would prefer that pressure be applied to [Israeli windsurfer] Lee Kurzits. She’s a world champion. She has broad shoulders that allow her to cope with it, and I give her this respect and admiration with all my heart. I’ve gotten quite close to Lee and we talk a lot. We exchange stories about our experiences and we discuss our frustrations. It helps with managing all of the expectations that people have for us.”

If you win a medal, will you retire-

“No way. I plan on continuing to the 2016 Games in Rio. After that, we can start to talk about other things – children, family, etc.”

“I want two medals, not one,” Pavel says. “One in London, and one in Rio. I believe in Alice, and I know that she can do it.”

Schlesinger also has not relinquished her academic dream, although she barely makes it to her psychology courses at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. “I choose the courses based on the test dates,” she says. “In other words, if there is an exam on this date when I know I’ll be in the country, I sign up for the course. I take study materials abroad with me, and after the competitions I sit down and study. It’s not easy, but it’s important to me. This field really appeals to me, and I didn’t want to give up on my post-judo development. There are courses that helped me understand judo-related things better, to take things easier and to think positively.”

The hour is late, and Pavel says it’s time for bed. “Every night after a competition I fall asleep to a Disney movie that I watch on my computer,” she says. “Especially those that I already know by heart, and I stare at them until I fall asleep.”

Now all that’s left is for her story to have fairy tale ending.

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