Beijing 2008
Tzuberi entered the 2008 Olympic Games under the shadow of Gal Fridman, a two-time Olympic medalist for Israel. He was ranked outside the top 10 coming into the tournament, but upgraded to an overall 1st place after the first 4 (of the total 11) events, finishing 1st and 3rd respectively. In the following 4 events, Tzuberi's best finish was a 6th place, in between 17th, 18th and 19th place finishes – results that seemed to end his hopes of an Olympic medal. He then won the 9th and placed 4th in the 10th event, thus re-entering the medal race as 4th place overall.
Just before the final medal race was about to start, Greek windsurfer Nikolaos Kaklamanakis, who was next to Tzuberi in the start line, was disqualified for an attempted head start. Tzuberi thought the judges disqualified him as well (in fact they did not), and decided to play it safe by "re-entering" the race and returned to the start line. By the time Tzuberi started surfing, he was approximately 1 minute behind the entire fleet.
Tzuberi had to place 4 places ahead of one of the top-3 surfers in order to win a medal and he accomplished just that by coming back from last place and finishing in an incredible 2nd place, and 3rd overall, while Great Britain's Nick Dempsey lost his medal by placing 7th – an overall 4th place finish.
Tzuberi's results were:
| Race | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Medal race |
Score | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Result | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 17 | 6 | (19) | 18 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 58 (77) |
(Notes: the worst race score is omitted. The medal race score is doubled.)
Read more about this topic: Shahar Tzuberi