Released hostage Ofer Calderon reunited with his cycling group on Wednesday as he attended the 2025 Israel Track Cycling National Championships as the guest of honor, one month after his return from Gaza, where he spent 484 days in Hamas captivity.

Calderon, an avid cyclist, donned a shirt from his cycling group “the Riding Smurfs” as he shook hands with the national championship winners on the podium and posed for photographs. Members of his cycling group, many of whom rode alongside his vehicle upon his return to Israel last month, were also in attendance.

Speaking to the Kan public broadcaster from the Tel Aviv velodrome in a segment aired on Friday, Calderon said that the outpouring of love he has received from the public since his return “is a very powerful force,” but quickly turned the attention away from himself, and to the plight of the 59 hostages who have yet to be released.

“Who knows as well as I do how the people there are feeling right now,” he said, appealing for the relevant parties to return to the negotiating table now that the first phase of the tenuous ceasefire and hostage release deal has concluded.

“When there aren’t any talks, it’s a disaster,” Calderon told the news outlet. “People there feel like they are dying and that the light at the end of the tunnel has suddenly gone out.”

Calderon was taken captive on October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists stormed Kibbutz Nir Oz, killing over 100 residents and some 15 foreign agricultural workers, and taking some 80 hostages.

He was seized together with two of his four children, Sahar, then 16, and Erez, then 12. Both were released during the weeklong truce in November 2023.

He was accompanied to Wednesday’s event by Sahar, as well as his oldest son Rotem.

Since his return, Calderon said he has completed one bike ride, albeit “in the city” rather than out in nature.

“It was fun, excellent,” he said. “It was freedom.”

“I see people in the street crying,” he said, asked about the impact his return has had on the Israeli public and on those who fought for his release. “I hug them and tell them ‘thank you so much.’ They truly gave me the strength to return and this is my tribute. To say thank you and hug them.”