Sailors Yoel Sela and Eldad Amir would almost certainly have become Israel's first-ever Olympic medalists at Seoul in 1988 in the Flying Dutchman if the second race of the series had not fallen on Yom Kippur, the most important holiday of the Jewish year. Israeli officials had made it clear they did not want any athletes competing on that day, threatening anyone that did with expulsion from the Games, so Sela and Amir duly sat out the second race of the event. They subsequently finished eighth and would have been guaranteed a medal if they had competed in that missed race and finished higher than 11th, which they did in five of their six races.