Team Poland - Profile

Highlights: Poland has missed just one edition of the Games since its first participation in 1924, and in those 21 Olympic Games athletes from the central European nation have had the most success in athletics events.

Race walker Robert Korzeniowski has won the most gold medals for Poland, with four to his name, won at three Games between 1996 and 2004. Korzeniowski took his first Olympic title in the men's 50km walk event in Atlanta, but it was in Sydney four years later that he wrote his name into the annals of race walking history. At the 2000 Games, he defended his 50km title from Atlanta and then a few days later backed it up by winning his first 20km gold in Olympic record time. That feat made him the first person to win both the 20km and 50km events at the Olympic Games. At the 2004 Games, his last, he won the 50km race for the third time in a row, making him the most successful race walker in Olympic history.

Irena Szewinska won seven Olympic medals, a Polish record, in a career that spanned five Games. Her total of seven medals makes her the female athletics competitor with the equal-third most medals, behind Merlene Ottey and Allyson Felix [nine] and Veronica Campbell-Brown [eight]. At Szewinska's first Games, in Tokyo in 1964, she was part of the team that won the 4x100m relay in world record time and she also took silver in the 200m and the long jump. She set another world record at the 1968 Games in Mexico City, this time in the 200m event. Her final gold medal was won in the 400m at the 1976 Montreal Games, again in a world record time.

Poland's first gold medal was claimed by women's discus thrower Halina Konopacka at the 1928 Games in Amsterdam. She threw 39.62m in the final round to take gold and set a world record. That medal came four years after Poland won its first Olympic medals at the 1924 Paris Games. In Paris, the men's team pursuit track cycling squad won silver while Adam Krolikiewicz won bronze in equestrian jumping.

At the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Poland won 11 medals, including two gold. Anita Wlodarczyk won gold in the women's hammer throw, her second consecutive Olympic title after she also won the same event in London in 2012. The rowing duo of Magdalena Fularczyk-Kozlowska and Natalia Madaj also stood on the top of the podium in the women's double sculls.

Additional Information: Website
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Anthem Title: Mazurek Dabrowskiego [Dabrowski's Mazurka]

Anthem Composer: Words by Jozef Wybicki.

Anthem Inducted: 1927

Official NOC Name: Polish Olympic Committee

Founding Date: 1918

IOC Recognition Date: 1919

Delegation President: Andrzej Krasnicki

Delegation Secretary General: Adam Krzesinski

First OG/PG Appearance: 1924

Number OG/PG Appearances: 22 [Tokyo 2020 included]

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