{"id":255337,"date":"2026-08-19T00:26:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T00:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/255337\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T00:26:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T00:26:31","slug":"israeli-ioi-gold-medalist-has-medal-revoked-over-israeli-flag-display","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/255337\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli IOI gold medalist has medal revoked over Israeli flag display"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 17-year-old Israeli student had his gold medal win disqualified at the 2026 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in Uzbekistan, after wearing the Israeli flag<\/a> during the awards ceremony.<\/p>\n

Yotam Budnik, from Rehovot<\/a>, raised the flag during the live-broadcast TV ceremony, despite knowing that Israeli symbols were not allowed.<\/p>\n

Since October 7, IOI hosts have forbidden Israeli contestants from competing with national symbols. As a result, the education<\/a> minister advised against sending a team. This year, however, it was agreed the students would go as independent contestants, without representing Israel specifically.<\/p>\n

Team leader Ron Ryvchin told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that despite the rules, \u201cYotam basically felt that this entire situation is quite absurd because the decision to forbid us from showing the flag was accepted without us being able to defend ourselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven in 2024, we competed online, and then they erased the name of Israel from the ceremonies. They even erased the name of Israel from the map, and they did not mention our online contestants at all.<\/p>\n

\"AA man holds a laptop computer as cyber code is projected on him (credit: KACPER PEMPEL\/REUTERS)<\/p>\n

\u201cSo he felt, year after year, Israeli students<\/a> are erased from their national identity or even erased completely. So he decided that as an act of protest, he wouldn\u2019t follow this rule. He showed the flag on the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Afterward, the international committee disqualified him because he did not follow the rule.<\/p>\n

Yotam refused to hand over medal until teammates received theirs<\/p>\n

The president of the IOI went to Yotam to take his medal, but he \u201crefused to hand it over\u201d until his friends received their medals.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was really, really, really brave. It was amazing to see a 17-year-old boy talking so well to them. He told them this rule is nonsense and that they just discriminate against people based on their country. And that he thinks that in an organization that should be focused on informatics and on bringing people together from various nations, fostering friendships, there is no place for these politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Ryvchin, the organizers told Yotam that he still must follow the rules.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey said that he made the first mistake when he showed the flag, and now he\u2019s making the second one, that it\u2019s better for him to return [the medal].\u201d<\/p>\n

They then removed him from the international IOI website, and he no longer appears in the ranking.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey changed his score to zero. So, like officially, he\u2019s not an IOI gold medalist.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, of course, we all think he earned his medal by himself. He worked very hard; he\u2019s super talented. I think he deserves this medal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryvchin: ‘Really great’ competition despite incident, Israelis win four medals<\/p>\n

Aside from this incident, Ryvchin said the competition \u201cwas really great,\u201d and three Israeli students won gold, and one bronze.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the first IOI for everyone. So it really is very impressive because it\u2019s very difficult in the first competition under pressure to perform so well.\u201d<\/p>\n

He told the Post he hopes the IOI will realize that the best way to really foster friendship and encourage young students everywhere to study informatics \u201cis to leave the politics out because it\u2019s kind of absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mostly, he wanted to congratulate the \u201camazing Israeli students\u201d again, who didn\u2019t even know in advance they would participate, but trained really hard anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really proud of them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 17-year-old Israeli student had his gold medal win disqualified at the 2026 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[15034,8310,37,2421,27496,9204],"class_list":["post-255337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-antizionism","tag-gold","tag-israel","tag-israelis","tag-medal","tag-students"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117119338908587673","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}