A.J. Edelman Goes For Gold
The sport of skeleton is not for the faint of heart. Starting from a crouch, riders take a running start while grasping a small sled, which they ride down an ice track at speeds of up to 80 m.p.h. At the Pyoengchang Olympics this winter, riders will be staring down a 1,372 meter track, with an 116 meter vertical drop throughout. Adam “A.J.” Edelman, Israel’s first ever competitor in skeleton, isn’t too concerned.
The Brookline native made aliyah in 2016, but his time on the ice goes back his time in hockey pads at the age of three for the Brookline Warriors. He continued playing the sport through his time at the modern Orthodox Maimonides School and at MIT, where he was “believed to be the first shomer-shabbat player in the history of the program,” according to his Team Israel bio (Edelman had also spent a year at a yeshiva before going to school). He graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in 2014, and was hired to work as a product manager for Oracle. In that career path so well-traveled, he also spent a brief period between his time senior year at M.I.T. and Oracle exploring options in drug-free bodybuilding, speedskating, and luge.