When air-raid sirens sounded in the previous days and weeks to indicate incoming ballistic missiles launched against Israel by Iran, Shaul Ladany didn’t get flustered. He just walked into the safe room of his house in Omer, near Beer Sheva, and closed the door.
Ladany, who celebrates his 90th birthday on April 2, 2026, has experienced worse in his long life. Far worse.
He lived through the Shoah as a boy in Yugoslavia. He had close calls as an Israel Defense Forces soldier. As an athlete competing at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, West Germany, he escaped harm as Palestinian terrorists raided Israel’s dormitories and murdered 11 of his teammates. He survived a serious car accident and a stroke.
“I don’t get excited by all this,” Ladany said by phone of the latest Israel-Iran war.
“It reminds me of 85 years ago, in 1941, when the Germans bombed our home in Belgrade. Of course, there were no air-raid sirens [then]. Our villa had a big basement, a laundry room and a garage. We went into the laundry room, and suddenly there was a big BOOM. The door was blown off. My grandmother lay atop me to save me. The door fell onto her and didn’t harm her.
“Neighbors entered our basement because they thought it would be safer than their own basement. All of them were killed.”
Ladany’s father, an officer in the engineering corps, then was on reserve duty along the border with Albania, so Ladany’s grandfather took control of the situation. Their car wouldn’t start, so the family — which included Ladany’s mother and his cousin, an orphan whom he always considered a sister — walked to the home of friends, who paid a farmer to house the Jews in his horse stable.
Ladany survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and reached Israel in 1948. After serving in the IDF, he studied industrial engineering and became a professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
As a master’s student at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ladany was drawn to race walking, an obscure specialty within track and field (also known as athletics) in which a competitor always must have one foot remain in contact with the ground. He became very good at it — world-class, in fact. He competed in the 1968 and 1972 Olympics.
In 1972, in New Jersey, he set a world record in the 50-mile (81 km.) distance, a mark that still stands: 7 hours, 23 minutes, 50 seconds. That same year, in Switzerland, he won the 100-kilometer (60-mile) world championship in 9:31:00. He won gold medals in five Maccabiah competitions and took 28 Israeli titles.
As an older man, Ladany continued competing and racking up championship medals in his age groups in race walking, walking marathons and swimming in Israel and abroad.
He authored an autobiography published in Hebrew in 1997 and in English in 2008, King of the Road: From Bergen-Belsen to the Olympics Games — The Autobiography of an Israeli Scientist and a World Record-Holding Race Walker. He was inducted in 2012 to the Ramat Gan, Israel-based International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
“His spirit is contagious and his accomplishments are unmatched, not just in Israel but [amongst] athletes around the globe,” said Jed Margolis, the hall’s president.
Uri Afek, an administrative member of Israel’s 1972 Munich delegation and Ladany’s longtime friend, called him “an important and successful athlete” in Israeli history.
That is especially so, Afek pointed out, when considering both the hours a race walker competes when compared to, say, a soccer match of 90 minutes and Ladany’s combination of athletic and professional success.
“He’s someone special, no doubt about it,” Afek said.
About a decade ago, en route to Germany for a commemorative event at Bergen-Belsen, he was felled by a stroke, which had previously taken the life of his wife, Shoshana. That slowed Ladany, but only somewhat. Last year, he competed in a 5K walk race. These days, he exercises up to two hours daily, including walking in ovals at home.
“I have no physical ailments,” he said. “I’m vegetarian, don’t smoke or drink coffee, don’t eat bad food. I didn’t gain weight. I probably weigh 70 kilos [154 pounds].”
Ladany’s strong, animated voice and his whimsy have weakened noticeably in the 11 years since we last met. He’s sold off some of his multiple collections, such as his postcards of the Zionist visionary, Theodor Herzl, and decorative pins from the World Zionist Congress. He has a caregiver. Understandably for a widower of 90, he is lonely. A physician living in Paris, a native of Novi Sad, was his last remaining first cousin, and now she’s gone.
“I have friends I speak with on the phone, who also are very old,” he said. “So many have died: those I served with in the army, studied with in high school and at the Technion, friends in Omer. There are not that many people my age anymore.”
Ladany chuckled.
For his big birthday, Ladany’s daughter, Danit, wanted to throw a party. He declined. He’s heard through the grapevine that the university’s engineering department is planning a bash of sorts. That would be okay by him.
A friend already provided a birthday gift: a volume of stories Ladany has told, some involving his own life. When he retired, Ladany’s university colleagues presented him with a two-volume set of his scientific and academic articles.
Asked how turning 90 strikes him, Ladany returned to where the conversation began.
“I don’t get excited by anything,” he said.
“In my refrigerator, I have chestnut spread, which my daughter bought when she was abroad,” he said. “I will wait until my birthday to eat some.”
Writer-editor Hillel Kuttler can be reached at [email protected].
