Israel’s Ofir Netzer experienced many setbacks in her career. In 2013, she was on the rise, placing 4th in the vault final at the European Championships but had to miss the whole 2014 season because of an injury. She briefly returned to competitions in 2015 and got injured again. In the fall of 2018, her long-time coach passed away from cancer and she ended up moving abroad in order to find a new coach. She ended up in Palma De Mallorca, training with Pedro Mir, the coach of Cintia Rodriguez:
“I’ve been living in Spain for half a year already. After my coach passed away in Israel, I contacted Pedro Mir and I’m really happy here. I met him at competitions, so I contacted him and moved there with the help of the Israeli federation. It was a bit hard in the beginning. I don’t live at home anymore, I’m without my family. Everything’s really new, the language, the friends, the apartment. And the training program is very-very different from Israel, whether in terms of conditioning, or the preparation for competitions, or the professional level. I’m learning a lot for my future, too. Now, I’m training as a part of a team. In Israel, it was always just me and my coach, so that’s one of the main things that are different now. I haven’t been back to Israel if half a year. Now, after Minsk, I’m going to Israel for a few days and after that, I’ll be back in Spain. I’ll also come to Israel a few days before the Israeli championships and then will go back to Spain again.”
Last time Netzer made an event final at a major competition was 2013. Now she is very happy to be back again and plans adding upgrades on all the events in order to finally get to the Olympics:
“Six years ago, I was in the vault final at the European Championships and now I’m in the final at the European games. It’s very exciting, I’ve been through a lot on my way here and this is the beginning of a better time. We’re working on new things on each of the events. On vault, there will be a very significant upgrade.”
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