Jowan Qupty ("koop-tee", Arabic: جوان قبطي, Hebrew: ג'ואן קופטי; born June 6, 1990) is a Palestinian-Israeli swimmer.[1][2] His hometown is Jerusalem.[2] He swims the breaststroke.
He is a three-time Israeli champion in the 100 m and 200 m breaststroke. He and Olympian Nimrod Shapira Bar-Or were high school roommates.
Qupty started swimming at a Jerusalem YMCA.[3] Swimming in Israel as a youth, his team was a mixture of Jews, Muslims, and Christians.[4]
He established records in the 200 m breaststroke in the Israeli national age group for ages 14, 15, 16, and 17.[3] At age 15, he won a gold medal in the 200 m breaststroke junior division at the 2005 Maccabiah Games.[3]
Qupty attended high school at The Bolles School, in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was 2007 Times-Union All-First Coast Florida Swimmer of the Year, and graduated in 2008.[1][2][3][5] He won the Florida high school swimming state 100 yard breaststroke championship (57.27 seconds) for the Bulldogs.[3] At 17 years of age, Quipty was ranked # 1 in the United States in the 200 yard breaststroke.[2] He missed most of the 2008–09 swim season due to a shoulder injury.
Qupty and fellow Israeli swimmer Nimrod Shapira Bar-Or had known each other when they were children, and swum together for the Jerusalem United swim club in Israel.[3][6] They attended Bolles together, where they were roommates for two years, swim team teammates, and became best friends.[3][4][6][7][8] Qupty's father, commenting on the friendship and teamwork between his Christian Arab Israeli son and his son's Jewish Israeli roommate/teammate, said: "Just to see them together after the race jumping and hugging each other; they were so happy. I was looking at them through my tears. Coming from our part of the world, you don't see that."[4] The younger Qupty observed that "people were amazed all the time" that he – a Palestinian – and a Jew could coexist, and Shapira Bar-Or said: "It shows how simple the situation is. If I can live with a Palestinian guy, I'm sure in our country we can live with a couple millions of Palestinians and Israelis together."[6]
