Krystal Troyano couldn’t shake a niggling fear in the days after her husband, Dan Elkayam, was killed in the Bondi shooting.
“What I really didn’t want to happen was for Dan to be remembered for the last five minutes of his life. This was bothering me a lot, to see him [described] in the news as Dan, the guy who died,” Troyano said.
“It was just five minutes of 27 years of living life so f—ng fully.”
Troyano said the idea for a tournament to pay tribute to Elkayam, a French citizen, engineer and semi-professional footballer, materialised in the days after the December 14 terror attack, when she was “grieving and so, so sad”.
Dozens of Elkayam’s friends and former teammates joined seven teams for the inaugural Dan’s Legacy Cup tournament to remember his life – rather than the way he died – at Barracluff Park in North Bondi on Saturday.
“We started having this fire in our hearts to make this meaningful somehow. Everything related to Dan is related to football as well. All his dreams were related to football, the memories of people and the deep love he had for it,” she said.
“This is why he went to Bondi that day – to play football. Football for him represented being around friends, laughing, at the beach, and just having a good time. He was such a great guy.”
Elkayam was at Bondi Beach, kicking a football with mates in the sun, and preparing to celebrate his Jewish faith by watching the lighting of the menorah at the Chanukah by the Sea event in the hours before he was shot.
The eastern suburbs resident has been remembered as a passionate footballer who played for Rockdale Ilinden FC’s Premier League side, and represented France and the Jewish community at the 2022 Maccabiah Games in Israel.
Players from the Rockdale side were among those who played in the Dan’s Legacy Cup on Saturday, stopping briefly for a minute’s silence before they all clapped and shouted, “One, two, three, for Dan” and ran back onto the field.
Elkayam’s former teammate Gaetan Faraci said the Frenchmen met in Australia and bonded over football.
Faraci said he had woken on Saturday, ready to head to Bondi to play football, and thought: “I’m going to see Dan today.”
“This is Dan’s area, he was always around Bondi, always wanting to go to the beach just to kick the ball.
“It’s very hard for me, personally, to go to Bondi Beach still.”
Faraci had last played alongside Elkayam the weekend before the shooting, when their team of French players, Casanowra City, had won the Project Volta Super League football tournament.
Faraci said members of the team were competing in Saturday’s event to help keep Elkayam’s memory alive.
“Every day we talk to Dan, and we feel like he’s still with us. He was such a good guy, such a treasure. This kind of person marked your life because of his kindness. We’re still waiting for him to come back.”
Troyano, who is from Brazil, met Elkayam at a Sydney hostel soon after each arrived in Australia in 2022. She said the pair had quietly married in Australia nearly two years ago, but had only told their friends at the time.
“We wanted to do everything fast,” she said. “With Dan I was rushing to live. Maybe somehow he felt …” she trails off. “I don’t know, it’s just a weird feeling that I had because we were running against the clock to do everything so fast.
“When everything happened, I was like, we really didn’t have time. I think we lived a lot in a very short period. Despite only being 27, he lived more than some people who die at 90.”
An IT engineer at NBCUniversal and avid traveller, Elkayam was born and raised in Le Bourget in Paris, where his family still resides.
Troyano said football was the way he connected to people.
“That’s why today is very much ‘Dan’ – you have people of all colours and religions. One of the meanings of this event is to bring all kinds of people together. In the environment where Dan grew up, he used to say ‘football saves’. He was travelling the world, he had a master’s degree, he was an engineer, he was playing football, making friends.
“This would be his dream I think, to have people playing football and talking about him, not about what happened.”
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