Inside Polish Sports

It is a fact of both life and Polish sport that Women are just better at everything. Maria Okrucińska proved just that last night in Montreal by winning the World Junior Time Trial title whilst Kasia Niewiadoma will go for the Road Race rainbow jersey on Saturday. Our Under 20 footballers may have gone out of the home World Cup but certainly didn't disgrace themselves after a 100% group stage record. Whilst on the track Klaudia Kazimierska destroyed her more experienced opposition in Brussels, Budapest and now at Crystal Palace.

On the men's side, Jan Urban's first competitive spell as Poland manager is sadly overshadowed by the meerkat on Wojciech Mońka's sweater and how some people have no right in the universe to scout for the fashion police. The Volleyball boys are in the Euro semis but that's where it starts going uphill on the road to the 2028 Olympics. And please don't let Rob Lambert or Brady Kurtz put Bartek Zmarzlik into the boards in case of the World Speedway title being decided in the final heat in Toruń. I'll fight them, you'll fight them, we're all fight them!

So in the fortnight that I've been on a job hunting break so many things happened that it would be apt to quote Macklemore and say that Polish sport, both on and off the field, is in "an F-ed up position".

Exhibit A is Iga and the most inexplicable collapse of her career against Qinwen Zheng. The problem with her right now is not the opponents, the injuries or the coaching staff. It's simply that she cares very much about playing and the greatness that we forced upon her since she was in grade school. And at age 25 it's still too early for her to have found the experience or meaning in life outside of the courts. She is the most public when winning or losing but in private she is isolated, which is the exact opposite of the structure that Tennis stars need.

Exhibit B is the Polish Olympic Committee, now liberated from Radosław Piesiewicz but still needing a complete overhaul and kumbaya with the great Olympians who have been shunned by the previous regime, most notably Justyna Kowalczyk.

Exhibit C is Jagiellonia Białystok whose manager texted with one of the linesmen last season to tell the ref in a crucial match to go easy on the bookings. Maybe not as bad a sin as Luciano Moggi speed dialling every ref in Italy during Calciopoli 20 years ago, but still something for which Jaga must suspend him before PZPN/Ekstraklasa give out bigger punishments.

Also, why Rodrigo de Paul taunting Lewy about not having won a World Cup is understandable purely from the Argentinian chauvinistic mindset, Damian Knyba moves closer to a heavyweight title shot by dispatching Andy Ruiz whilst Michał Cieślak becomes a Cruiserweight champ, but in accordance with Boxing's absurd system not the champion.

Hubert Wagner and the 1976 Volleyball Gold retrospective coming up on Friday or Saturday. Interview Episode next week.

Well who would have thought......... That the guy who was never an athlete or an Olympian himself yet posed on sponsorship billboards with our Olympians. Who used the Okęcie Airport VIP lounge for him and his family at least 35 times in just the first 18 months of his chairmanship. Who spent 12 million of our public złotys on a Polish House for our athletes in Paris which cost 30 euro to even walk into. Who gave our medalists from Milano/Cortina prize money in form of tokens and not cash while knowing that the exchange will go bust. Has now been arrested and charged with two counts, including one in which he accepted a 40,000 euro watch as a bribe from the head of that said crypto exchange that has now gone bust.

I would've never guessed.............

On this historical retrospective we take a look back at perhaps the most consequential image in Polish sporting history. It is a moment the place of which in time is not at all separate from what happened outside of the sporting arena.

On July 30, 1980 Władysław Kozakiewicz fought for Olympic pole vault gold against no less than three Soviets in front of a straight up abusive Moscow crowd. Yet once he cleared the bar at 5.70 meters, for a split second, he let the Russians know what he thought of them. Afterwards, both the Polish and USSR governments wanted to strip him of gold and the world record.

But the one party who could not scrub the image out of their minds were a weary and downtrodden countrymen. Just 15 days later the Gdańsk Shipyard workers went on strike, and the country and Europe as a whole would never be the same!

*This is a reupload from April 9, 2025*

In the early hours of Friday morning a 36-year-old head of Hutnik Kraków hooligans was beaten to the end of his life by nine people who claimed to be supporting Wisła but, just like all others who over the years have committed violence with Football as an alibi, are an affront to the sport and to our society. Whilst those senseless crimes between sets of club scarves

Also, apparently we aren't done writing Radosław Piesiewicz's future indictment because last year he accepted a gold-cased watch worth 40,000 euros from..........the CEO of the crypto exchange that sponsored the Polish Olympic Committee, which Piesiewicz is still inexplicably the head of, and defaulted on $800 million.

And a technically belated(Announced last week but this weekend was his first GP in charge) congrats to Marcin Budkowski, the new team principal of Cadillac F1! Hopefully the maiden point will come sooner than later.............

Beskid and Kraków Challenger interviews in a separate episode that will drop on Thursday at the latest. I promise!