Years ago, Martin Kartavi made a deal with his childhood friends: If any of them qualified for the Olympics, they would go together and get matching tattoos.
Now their flights are all booked for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Kartavi, 20, secured a spot at the Olympics last November during the Rotterdam Qualification, where he swam the 50-meter freestyle in 22.13 seconds. He will compete for his home country Israel before joining UNC swimming and diving next year as an incoming first-year in the fall.
“When you are able to go to a competition like the Olympic Games, you can be prepared for any competition at that point after that — just based off of your experience managing the expectations and the pressures of the Olympic Games,” UNC head swimming and diving coach Mark Gangloff said. “I think that he's gonna come in with a body of experience that very few people on our team have.”
Despite Kartavi's current prowess in the water, he was introduced to swimming out of necessitation. Kartavi’s mother wanted him to learn to swim to prevent drowning, but it was soon evident that he had a passion for it. Once Kartavi began winning medals, his mindset shifted and he intensified his training.
When Kartavi was 17 years old, he won bronze at the European Junior Championships, at which point he said he knew it wasn’t just fun and games.
“I needed to start doing it really serious and taking it more seriously than I took it before," Kartavi said.
He took bronze again the following year in Otopeni, Romania, with a time of 22.57 seconds.
Kartavi was on an upward trajectory in his swimming career until he broke his knee last fall. He was in a cast for a month and a half.
“In this month, I was just the most sad and depressed I think in my life ever,” Kartavi said. “I thought, ‘I will never come back to swimming,' because it was a really serious injury and I know that there are a lot of people that don’t come back after this injury.”
