BARCELONA '92 OLYMPICS / DAY 6 : Time for Israel to Enjoy Games : Judo: Twenty years after tragedy at Munich, this country finally wins its first Olympic medal, a silver.

By MIKE DOWNEY

July 31, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

BARCELONA — Women’s judo. Second place in women’s judo. It was not much. It was not enough. Nothing would ever be enough. But for Uri Afek, who was there on Sept. 6, 1972, when terrorists infiltrated the Olympic village in Munich and executed 11 of his countrymen, it was a silver medal worth its weight in gold.

“We will never forget,” said Afek, chief of Israel’s 31-athlete delegation to the 25thSummer Olympics here. “But perhaps now Israel will have something to remember from the Olympic Games aside from murder.”

Exchanging kisses and embraces in the grandstand of the Palau Blaugrana auditorium, Afek’s eyes were moist as he watched Yael Arad, a 25-year-old, 136-pound aspiring dietitian from Tel Aviv, mount the victory pedestal Thursday to accept the first medal ever won by an Israeli athlete in Olympic competition--man or woman, summer or winter.

At Afek’s side was Yoram Oberkovich, president of Israel’s Olympic Committee, and Oberkovich’s wife, Ronet. They longed to hear “Hatikvah,” an anthem that has never been played at an Olympics except in requiem 20 years ago to the honored dead.

Instead they listened to “La Marseillaise,” as the flag of France was raised for Catherine Fleury, gold medalist in the half-middleweight classification. Fleury defeated Arad by the barest of margins--on a referee’s decision after a scoreless match and a split vote by two judges.

Arad’s coach, Dani Leopold, labored but failed to conceal his disappointment.

He said: “A medal is wonderful, yes. But the decision wasn’t just and the refereeing wasn’t just.”

Arad herself, however, saw the event from a historic perspective, as a form of vindication, even though she was only 5 at the time of the Munich massacre.

“Now, after 20 years, after the murder of the 11 sport people, this is the right moment for us . . . to revenge (sic) these murders. We owe it to the families and the people of Israel,” Arad said.

After she clinched a medal and again after the awards ceremony, Arad rushed to the gallery for hugs and high-fives with enthusiastic spectators from back home, who stood and waved a large handmade Israeli flag throughout her four matches Thursday, cheering wildly and arguing loudly with the spectators whose view they obscured.

Many of them had come to Barcelona as winners of a contest sponsored by a soft-drink company. Meni Barokas, 19, of Tel Aviv, who is about to enter the army, waved the flag while his year-older brother, Dudi, blew into a harmonica. At the bottom of their flag was written: “Israel Is Waiting for a Medal.”

“We once were afraid to come to the Olympics,” Meni Barokas said. “Now we come to win medals at the Olympics.”

Arad appreciated her support group.

“It was a very traumatic moment for the Israeli people, and before we came to these Games, I cannot say that I was frightened, but I did think about it,” she said. “I think we all think about it.

“Maybe today is something to help us forget.”

An unusually large television audience in Israel is believed to have viewed live coverage of Arad’s bid for the nation’s first medal.

When those gathered around her began chanting and cheering with particular vigor, Shuli Benjamin, 26, leaned to the person to her left and whispered: “The TV camera just came on.” To her right, waving a tissue-paper streamer and chanting as robustly as anyone, was Shuli’s mother, Galia.

Even serious challenges by Israelis for Olympic medals were rare. For some, not since Esther Roth qualified for the final in the 100-meter hurdles at the 1976 Montreal Olympics--four years after her coach, Amitzur Shapira, had been one of the 11 slain at Munich--had anyone materialized with as much chance at a medal as Arad.

“She was our big hope,” Yoram Oberkovich said.

“What kind of woman is she?” a journalist asked.

Before her husband could respond, Ronet Oberkovich interjected: “She is a winner!”

Indeed, the 1990 Israeli national championship had been won by Arad, who put her university nutrition studies on hold to concentrate on the Olympics. Her best finish at either the World Championships last year at Barcelona or the last two European Championships, however, had been third place.

But women’s judo being new to the Olympics this year--at Seoul in 1988 it was a demonstration sport--Arad stood a good chance of succeeding. And when she won afternoon preliminary matches against Miroslava Janosikova of Czechoslovakia and Begona Gomez Martin of Spain, her chances increased.

To clinch a medal, Arad two hours later had to fight Frauke-Imke Eickoff, a German, which the Israeli contingent found ironic, considering the site of the 1972 slayings, never far from their minds.

“Yes, that was unusual,” Arad said.

So was their match. It was so unusual that when an ippon maneuver was scored, resulting in the referee’s signaling of the end of the match, it was the German who sprang to her feet with her arms raised in triumph.

Arad’s coach, Leopold, leaped on the sideline simultaneously. When the referee indicated to Arad that she was the winner, she clutched her face with both hands in surprise while Eickoff, her opponent, stood nearby with arms spread in disbelief.

“It was my ippon, not hers,” Eickoff protested.

The magnitude of what she had done overwhelmed Arad. It takes a lot to make a judo fighter cry, but as she said later: “This is something I have dreamed about and worked for since I was 8 years old.”

At first, the gold-medal match seemed almost anticlimactic. Once it began, Arad and Fleury were fiercely and evenly matched, so much so that four minutes passed without a point being scored.

Because the Frenchwoman latched onto Arad’s left arm without letting go for what he believed to be too long a time, Leopold appealed for a point in Arad’s favor. Arad, too, spread her palms to implore referee Ling Wang of China to award a score, but the official shook her head.

When the bout ended--hundreds of French spectators were trying to drown out the few dozen Israelis--it was left to the judges to declare a winner by raising flags, either red or white. On cue, they simultaneously raised one of each.

That left it up to the referee. Wang gestured toward Fleury, who fell to her knees and buried her face in her hands. Arad looked stricken.

On the victory pedestal, 15 minutes later, Arad ran the gamut of emotion, wiping her eyes, waving to her compatriots, shrugging her shoulders, taking a deep breath. She was asked later what she had thought about while listening to the French anthem.

“About listening to ours,” she said.

Judo Medalists

* MEN, 172 POUNDS

GOLD: Hidehiko Yoshida (Japan)

SILVER: Jason Morris (United States)

BRONZE: Bertrand Damaisin (France)

Kim Byung Joo (South Korea)

* WOMEN, 134 POUNDS

GOLD: Catherine Fleury (France)

SILVER: Yael Arad (Israel)

BRONZE: Zhang Di (China)

Elena Petrova (CIS)