Anastasia Gorbenko
She has won 8 World and European championships gold medals, competed at 2 Olympic finals, broken most of the Israeli national records for women and mixed relays, and is considered to be Israel's greatest swimmer of all time.[6][7][8] Both her father Vladimir Gorbenko (a computer expert) and her mother Larisa (a special education teacher) had immigrated from Ukraine to Israel.[5] She trained at the Wingate Institute in Netanya, and attended Hof HaSharon High School in Kibbutz Shefayim, where she majored in biology.[17] In July 2018 Gorbenko set a new Israeli record in the 200m breaststroke, at 2:29.17, at the 2018 European Junior Swimming Championships; Long Course (50 m) in Helsinki, Finland.[28] In November 2019, she broke her own Israeli record in the women's 400m individual medley at the Kiryat Bialik pool as part of the Millennium meet, swimming a 4:35.82.[26] In February 2020, she set a new Israeli national record in the women’s 400m IM at the 2020 FFN Golden Tour Camille Muffat meet in Nice, France, with a time of 4:41.48 while winning a bronze medal.[30] In October 2020 in Budapest, Hungary, she set new Israeli national and European junior records in the women’s 200m individual medley, with a time of 2:06.46.[42] In November 2021, Gorbenko won the gold medal in the 200m individual medley at the 2020 European Championships (SC) in Kazan, Russia, with a time of 2 minutes and 5.17 seconds, beating Maria Ugolkova of Switzerland.[37] In April 2022 at the Swedish Open, she won the gold medal with a national record of 2:10.43 in the 200m medley ahead of Hungarian 2016 Olympic champion Katinka Hosszu.[45] In May 2022 at the Mare Nostrum Tour in Barcelona, Spain, she won the gold medal in the women's 200m IM, with a time of 2:10.65, ahead of Katinka Hosszu, Hungarian multi-Olympic medalist.[47] In August 2022 she won the gold medal at the European Swimming Championships in Rome, Italy, in the 200m individual medley in 2:10.92 minutes, ahead of the Dutch swimmer Marrit Steenbergen.[6] Gorbenko dedicated her medal to her childhood friend Matan Angrest, who was among the 130 kidnapped hostages being held captive by Hamas in Gaza.[54] In December 2023 at the U.S. Open Swimming Championships she won a silver medal in the women's 400m individual medley with a time of 4:37.90, in Greensboro, North Carolina.