Keren Siebner

Siebner was born on June 9, 1990, in Kfar Saba.[1][3] Her early competitive experience included the Israeli Championships and the Maccabiah; at the 2006 European Junior Swimming Championships, she finished 14th in the 50-meter freestyle and 11th in the 4×100-meter medley relay.[3]

At 18, she went to Georgia Tech in the United States to study industrial and systems engineering.[3] She devoted substantial effort to her studies, struggled to balance coursework and assignments with swimming, and graduated with highest honors.[3] During her time in the United States, she shifted her focus from freestyle to butterfly.[3] Explaining the change, she said, “I simply started getting bored with freestyle. It didn’t interest me that much,” and identified butterfly as a less crowded field in which she might stand out.[3]

Siebner first earned selection to Israel’s senior swimming team at age 24 in 2014, when the 200-meter butterfly was her strongest event and she was living in Tel Aviv.[3] Her development had included a frustrating period without improvement, about which she said: “It’s exhausting and frustrating, and even if I told people I would retire, I don’t think I really meant it.”[3]

In 2014, she swam 2:13.17 in the 200-meter butterfly at a Grand Prix meet in Monaco, lowering Vered Borokhovsky’s 13-year-old Israeli record by more than a second.[6] That August, she joined Amit Ivri and Anastasia Korotkov as the three female swimmers in Israel’s delegation to the European Championships in Berlin.[9] In the Berlin heats, Siebner improved the national record to 2:12.19, placed 12th overall, and advanced to the semifinal.[6] She finished 16th in the semifinal with a time of 2:14.74.[6]

At the 2015 European Short Course Championships in Netanya, Siebner swam the third leg of Israel’s women’s 4×50-meter freestyle relay, following Zohar Shikler and Ivri, with Andrea Murez swimming the final leg.[10] The team finished sixth in an Israeli-record time of 1:38.52.[10] In 2015, Siebner set a national short-course record of 2:09.69 in the 200-meter butterfly.[2]

In April 2016, she lowered the Israeli 200-meter butterfly record to 2:11.59.[8] Alongside her swimming career, she worked full-time as an industrial and systems engineer at BioPharmex, a company specializing in clean rooms and laboratories for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.[8] She combined that work with twice-daily training at Wingate.[8]

At the European Championships in London in May 2016, Siebner competed with Shikler, Ivri, and Murez in the women’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay.[11] The team hoped the race would help secure Olympic qualification, but an illegal switch led to disqualification, leaving it without a registered time.[11] Siebner also placed 16th in the 200-meter butterfly at those championships.[1]

At the Israeli national championships at Wingate Institute in July 2016, Siebner had won six gold medals by the Sunday of the meet.[12] Those victories came in the 200-meter butterfly, 4×200-meter freestyle relay, 200-meter backstroke, 4×100-meter freestyle relay, 100-meter butterfly, and 4×100-meter medley relay.[12] In the 100-meter butterfly, she defeated Olympian Amit Ivri with a time of 58.92 seconds; her club, Hapoel Dolphin Netanya, also finished ahead of Ivri’s Hapoel Emek Hefer in the medley relay.[12] Her 2:13.10 in the 200-meter backstroke lowered the previous national record by 0.29 seconds.[12] Her eventual gold-medal total at the championships was eight.[12]

Siebner initially missed the individual Olympic qualification standard in the 200-meter butterfly by just 0.01 seconds.[4] Reflecting on the unsuccessful qualification effort, she wrote: “I gave it all I got, I believed in myself, and most importantly - I DARED.”[12] A subsequent decision concerning relay qualification nevertheless opened a route to Rio.[4][5]

Israel’s women’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay had initially ranked 17th, with 16 teams due to qualify for the Olympics.[5] The Israeli Swimming Association found that Belarus, which ranked ahead of Israel, had not met the qualification criteria, and successfully appealed to FINA.[5] Siebner was consequently added to Israel’s delegation as its 48th member, joining relay teammates Murez, Shikler, and Ivri, who had already qualified for individual events.[4] It was to be her first Olympic Games and Israel’s first Olympic appearance in a women’s swimming relay.[4][5] On receiving the news, she said: “This is just an amazing dream come true, it’s such good news, I’m still struggling to realise it’s happened.”[4]

At the Rio Olympics, Siebner and her three teammates finished 16th out of 16 teams in the women’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay, recording 3:41.97.[13] Siebner said Murez had been sick, but that the team had nevertheless repeated its time from a meet in Belgium.[13] She also credited her teammates with making her Olympic experience possible.[13]

Siebner competed at the 2017 World Championships in Budapest, placing 24th out of 48 swimmers in the 100-meter butterfly heats in 59.72 seconds and not advancing to the semifinal.[7] She also reunited with Murez, Ivri, and Shikler for the women’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay.[7] Their time of 3:44.35 placed them 11th, outside the final.[7]

Siebner’s Israeli short-course record of 2:09.69 in the 200-meter butterfly stood from 2015 until October 2026, when Leah Polonsky lowered it to 2:09.33.[2] Her record-setting career also included national marks in the 200-meter backstroke and the long-course 200-meter butterfly.[2][6]

Beyond competition, Siebner gave talks and led activities for children and teenagers through Athena, Israel’s center for the advancement of women in sport.[8] She addressed girls’ concerns that swimming and muscular development might harm their appearance, explaining that becoming stronger and more muscular had made her like her own body more.[8]