Post by Bonobo on Jan 18, 2022 18:31:52 GMT 1
Jacek Wszoła, high jumper, Olympic champion
www.onet.pl/sport/onetsport/polak-oczarowal-swiat-listy-od-fanek-wywozono-workami/el44mpf,d87b6cc4
ONET SPORT ATHLETICS
The blond-haired young man charmed the whole world
When in 1976 he won the gold medal in the high jump at the Olympic Games in Montreal, he was watched by one and a half billion (!) TV viewers around the world. Six years later - in the final of the European championship in Athens - no one watched Jacek Wszoła, because the military commissioner ruling the sport in Poland at that time ordered that this rebellious athlete be removed from the start. Too bad choice of shoes.
Maciej Petruczenko
1.2 thousand
December 30, 2021, 09:31
You can read this text in 10 minutes
Jacek Wszoła during the Olympic Games in Montreal (1976)Jacek Wszoła during the Olympic Games in Montreal (1976) - Janusz Szewiński / Private Archive
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- Just putting on a T-shirt and tracksuit with the White Eagle made me ecstatic. For the allowances I received, I bought my dream jeans for a long time, wandering around the stores, so that almost the entire team was not late for the return flight to Warsaw - he recalls
In order to prepare him for the start in the Olympic Games in Montreal, his father poured water from the jets into the inrun of the hill. He appreciated it when he had to jump in the pouring rain in the Olympic final
He reached for the gold and in an instant, the long-haired young man, behaving very loosely, literally charmed the whole world, and his future wife Krystyna could stuff the letters from admirers at home with whole bags
The hero of the Olympic Games in 1976, Jacek Wszoła turns 65 on December 30
More such stories can be found on the main page of Onet.pl
>> The article comes from "PS Historia", a supplement to "Przegląd Sportowy", which is published every Thursday. Read more amazing stories here <<
ALSO CHECK
Polish champion said goodbye, but still starting. "I have fun again"
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Wszoła does not hide that he feels uncomfortable with his old age. - The old age of me, the Olympic champion, completely disappoints me. I was terribly disappointed, although I try to fight it by engaging in various strength exercises a few times a week, as well as cycling. In my young years, I had surprising periods of physical weakness without even guessing where it was coming from. It was only in the 1990s that it was discovered that one kidney had not been functioning for a long time. This condition was the cause of high blood pressure, which I fortunately started to cope with by taking the appropriate pill systematically. I see a cardiologist once every six months. As you can see, however, due to the problem with the kidney, vision defect (at the beginning of his career, Wszoła wore glasses, then lenses - editor's note) and ankle and knee surgery,
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Like his 94-year-old aunt Wanda Traczyk-Stawska, a member of the Gray Ranks and the Home Army during World War II, wounded in the Warsaw Uprising, and today fighting with all self-denial for women's rights and respect for democracy.
Wanda is one of the three sisters in the Traczyk family (they also had a brother who died during the bombing of Warsaw by the Germans). Jacek's mother is Kazimiera Traczyk, who belongs to the aforementioned three, and is three years younger, and immediately after the war, in Warsaw's Budowlane (Skra) and Legia districts, an excellent gymnast, who in 1954 married the AZS AWF Warszawa runner, a graduate of this university, Roman Wszoła. They both studied at the University of Physical Education for one year, and they fell in love with each other during canoeing and cycling trips.
See also: The only such Polish triumph in history. The hero played with ... a broken finger
Would-be gymnast
- Since Jacek was born at a time when we were both athletes, or coaches, he had to commune with sports from an early age, because I or my wife took him to training camps. He was perhaps two or three years old when he and his mother went to Braniewo to the Legia gymnastics camp. When my mother was busy, soldiers looked after him there - recalls Mr. Roman, who will be 90 years old in a year's time, and in his form as if he was no more than twenty.
And this is not surprising, since being his son's coach before the Olympics in Montreal and Moscow, he definitely overtook him on mountain climbs, especially on the way to Kasprowy Wierch. - Am I preparing for the Olympics or are you? He asked ironically.
Perhaps the fact of taking little Jacek to the camps, where he was the fifth wheel of the cart, discouraged him from playing sports at first, but - as he himself notices now - he nevertheless succumbed to pressure from his parents, and above all his mother, who was a physical education teacher in the Glass House estate in Grochów, the primary school he attended first. No wonder that his first discipline was gymnastics.
Jacek Wszoła (P) with his father RomanJacek Wszoła (P) with his father Roman - Janusz Szewiński / Private archive
However, I started to grow quickly, and in addition, one day I fell on my head while exercising on wheels and eventually became discouraged to gymnastics - explains Jacek. - Fortunately, I moved to Primary School No. 55, right next to the Eagle Stadium, and there I met an excellent PE teacher, Jan Hojarczyk, who was fascinated by the new technique of high jump, presented at the Olympic Games in Mexico by the American d....k Fosbury.
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See also: Suitcase of dollars, FBI, and star status in the US. Here is a Pole who tricked the KGB
Hojarczyk himself was not able to make a flop jump with his back to the bar, but he explained exactly what this technique is about. We jumped, landing on a "coffin" made of sand and soon I became the master of the school, jumping in a new style, at least 1.56 m. , long jumper Zbigniew Beta, who reached 7.77 m in the long jump, as well as brothers Włodzimierz and Ireneusz Nalazków, later leading volleyball players of the country - has sentimental memories of one of the first followers of d....k Fosbury in Poland. It is worth adding that while still a child, Jacek often competed with his father in family high jump and long jump competitions, and the prize for the victory was an after-dinner jelly.
The magic of the Fosbury-flop style
Fosbury fortunately won the Olympic competition in Mexico with his style with a result of 2.24 m, clearly worse than the world record set in 1963 by the Russian Valery Brumel (2.28 m) by means of the straddle technique. Few people tried to imitate d....k, who, moreover, never managed to win the title of the US champion. In 1970, the representative of the People's Republic of China, Ni Chi-chin (Ni Zhiqin according to the current English terminology) made an unofficial improvement of the Brumel record to 2.29 m in Shanghai, and a year later the American Patrick Matzdorf was officially the record holder in Berkeley with this result.
Both record holders continued to use the metering technique. Meanwhile, the Fosbury-flop style began to spread the most in Europe, where in 1971 Lithuanian Kiejstutis Shapka, representing the USSR, won the European Championship in Helsinki. The champion of the 1972 Olympics in Munich was another USSR jumper - Estonian Juri Tarmak (2.23 m), and the second place with a result of 2.21 m was taken by Stefan Junge from the GDR (both crossover style). It was only the third in the competition (also 2.21 m) that the 18-year-old Swedish American, Dwight Stones, presented an extremely impressive-looking Fosbury-flop, which a year later, at the same Munich stadium, improved Matzdorf's record by 2.30 m, although some attempts along the way he performed metastatic.
Jacek Wszoła (P) and Dwight StonesJacek Wszoła (P) and Dwight Stones - Janusz Szewiński / Private archive
Already with the Olympic performance, Stones encouraged Jacek Wszoła, a student of the Technical College of Communications in Saska Kępa, who watched a TV broadcast (personal record 1.80 m), that he announced: - In four years I will be the Olympic champion, jumping on the flop, which amused his father every hundredth. he had not yet trained his son in high jumping. Whether he wanted it or not, he had to do it two years later, when Jacek's training Stanisław Janowski, otherwise a rugby player, responsible for training jumpers in a technical school, perfectly adapted to the sport (thanks to Roman Wszola), left his ward as a co-record holder of Poland (2,20 m - Edward Czernik's equal record from 1964), moving permanently to Zduńska Wola.
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See also: Scandal after years. Polish star destroyed by his wife ?! Here are the details
While at the Olympics in Mexico only the creator of the new style, d....k Fosbury, jumped backwards to the bar, in Munich his imitator was not only the Stones, but also Istvan Major of Hungary. After four years in Montreal, the vast majority of jumpers were already using the flop, and in 1980 in Moscow only three of the 16 finalists remained with the crossover, which a little earlier allowed the Ukrainian in the USSR colors - Volodymir Jaszczenko - to set the last world records with this technique (2.33 m in 1977 in Richmond and 2.34 m in 1978 in Tbilisi).
Jacek WszołaJacek Wszoła - Janusz Szewiński / Private archive
On May 25, 1980, in Eberstadt, Jaszczenko was dethroned by Jacek Wszoła, who jumped 2.35 m, although this record survived only one day, because on the next day Dietmar Moegenburg (West Germany) jumped the same number. At the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, the representative of the "German Doping Republic" Gerd Wessig took the world record from Wszole and Moegenburg with the result of 2.36 m, winning the gold medal. This hill meteor suddenly appeared, so suddenly disappeared from the arena. Even in the period when Jacek was still starting, the 2.40 m barrier broke (this is how much Rudolf Powarnicyn from the USSR jumped in 1985), and in 1989 the Cuban Javier Sotomayor reached 2.44 m, and in 1993 he climbed by centimeter higher. From then on, his world record, set in Salamanca, had not flinched. In this year's Olympic Games in Tokyo, three medalists jumped 2.37 m,
Technical College of Communications and MKS AZS
- In fact, it was the first time that I went with one of my parents to a sports camp while still in a pram as an infant - says Wszoła. - Over the years, it turned out that I spend all winter and summer holidays at camps, admiring the participating sports champions. Until the time came that in the competition with my father for the after-dinner jelly, I started to win the high jump. When I became a student of the Technical School of Communications, where my dad was the deputy director for sports affairs and a trainer at the same time, I could appreciate that the gym is three times the size of the average gym there. Not so quickly I became a player of MKS AZS Warszawa, gaining access to the best training facilities in Poland. In the first class of technical secondary school I had only the fourth result in the high jump, but in the third I improved by 20 cm and won the club championship. From the group of people training with me, I remember, among others the future European champion in the indoor 60 m hurdles Romuald Giegiel. For a short time, Marian Woronin, the future European record holder in the 100 m race, was with us, whose brother-in-law was one of the teachers there.
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See also: He killed while drunk, jumped from the 9th floor. The Polish star could not stand it
- My model of high jumper in MKS AZS was exceptionally strong and lively Zbyszek Wiśniewski (later Polish ringo champion - editor's note). But then Włodzimierz Perka, the future husband of beautiful Danuta Wołosz, one of the best 100 m hurdles runners in the world, jumped higher than us. With time, I took the place of the club leader in the high jump. The big breakthrough in my career, still a junior, was my performance in the match of the adult national team against Germany in Kassel, where I equaled Edward Czernik's Polish record of 2.20 m. Just putting on a T-shirt and tracksuit with the White Eagle made me ecstatic. For the allowances I received, I bought my dream jeans for a long time, wandering around the stores, so that almost the entire team was not late for the return flight to Warsaw - laughs Jacek, who still remembers that in 1973 he set a life record of 2,
In 1974, having already run a runner-up in the student gymnasium (Athens 1973), he achieved a plus not only the equalization of Edward Czernik's Polish record, but also fifth place in the European Senior Championships in Rome, where he jumped 2.19 m, and by the way together with our other representative in the high jump, Janusz Wrzosek (2.05 m - he was eliminated in the qualifying round), visited the historical places of the Eternal City.
- If I had two fewer knocks, I would have won a bronze medal, which would be a great success for the 18-year-old, notes Wszoła, years later, who then lacked experience in preparing such small things as a container with water and a wet towel, necessary in a Mediterranean climate. But he was happy anyway, starting in the Polish national team, next to the main heroine of this championship, sprinter Irena Szewińska, obstacle player Bronisław Malinowski, pole-vaulter Władysław Kozakiewicz, ten-legged player Ryszard Skowronek, and the victory in the high jump of the Danish medical graduate Jesper Torring (2.25 m) was accepted with full respect. The following season he finally won his first international title, becoming European junior champion in Athens.
Jacek Wszoła, Irena Szewińska and Tadeusz ŚlusarskiJacek Wszoła, Irena Szewińska and Tadeusz Ślusarski - Janusz Szewiński / Private archive
Taking part in the youthful "spontaneity", Wszoła admits today that at that time he did not notice such a problem as illegal doping.
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- Something was just reading there in the "Przegląd Sportowy" about the Swedish discobolus Ricky Bruch, who claimed that due to the use of steroids his body falls off his bones, but I treated it as media nonsense. And I could not imagine the use of pharmacological doping in running and jumping at all - now recalls Wszoła, who, however, at the Olympic Games in Montreal had to come across the sad fact of disqualifying two Polish representatives for steroid doping: Danuta Rosani, who was not even a finalist of the discobolus, and Zbigniew weightlifter. Kaczmarek, who was deprived of the gold medal ...
Father behind the fence ...
Although Jacek flew to Montreal with his father as a coach, Roman was not a member of the official team. He lived at an angle with the Polish people who looked after him, and he helped his son during training, leaning over the fence. In the end, it turned out that the art of prediction was the most important. While still at the camp in Spała Wszoła, the senior prepared Jacek for the possibility of a downpour during the Olympic competition and, in order to get him used to such conditions, he often poured the Spała run-up with water from the hose.
When he surprised me for the first time, I wasted a pair of shoes in the water in which I trained, but when I had to jump in pouring rain in Montreal, such a scenario was not new to me, and anyway I was the type of jumper who - unlike my idol, then already the world record holder with the result of Dwight Stones 2.30 m, does not take a quick run-up - explains Wszoła.
- Stones was very afraid of the rain and even before the start he rebuked the hosts that they had not completed the planned construction of the Olympic stadium with a sliding roof. The rain, unfortunately for him, did fall, and when it came to the showdown between Stones and Canadian Greg Joy, we had to mop ourselves to clear the puddles on the litter. From all of this I came out unscathed, winning the competition with 2.25 m, which was an Olympic record, Joy took second place with 2.23 m, and Stones had to settle for third place, just like in Munich. And for him it was little consolation that four days later in Philadelphia he raised his world record to a height of 2.31 meters - the winner of 1976 concludes his story.
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Letters from admirers
After the Montreal Olympics, he won and lost once, but the most important was the colossal propaganda effect of the victory in the Olympics, watched by 1.5 billion people. In an instant, the long-haired young man, behaving very loosely, literally enchanted the whole world, and his future wife Krystyna could stuff the letters at home with whole bags.
- After the competition, what surprised me the most was that the audience - despite the rain - did not leave the stands. At first, I assumed that people were simply waiting for the Poland-GDR final football match planned there, but they really wanted to applaud their compatriot Greg Joy to the end - years later the undisputed winner, who treated the Olympic performance at the time, was like a friendly party.
- Earlier, I noticed that a French guy, Guy Wire, was lighting a cigarette, who was getting ready to take off over the 100 m hurdles. I decided to follow in his footsteps and at least twice during my competition I asked the judge to escort me to the gate of the stadium and there I dusty Marlboro brought from the country each time. Now it would be impossible, but then such things were still tolerated - admits Wszoła, adding self-critically that he has not given up smoking until today. "I envy my wife who quit cigarettes once and for all," he says.
Tiger vs Adidas
When, four years after Montreal, he won only a silver medal at the Olympics in Moscow, he might have been disappointed, but he had the right to suppose that he had found a conqueror in doping Wessig. More than purely sports, he was tired of the details of jumping shoes.
In Montreal, he jumped in Adidas' national contract with Poland, specially sewn on site by this company. Then, however, he decided to buy slippers from the Japanese company Tiger-Onitsuka. For this reason, the GKKFiS military commissioner Wacław Feryniec, established under martial law, ordered him to be removed from the competition in the final competition of the 1982 European Championships in Athens and disqualified for several months. Jacek has already had an ankle surgery behind him, which he damaged on a makeshift tartan in the Poznań hall. All this meant that the last part of the career of the two-time Olympic medalist was not very effective.
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But years later it is only remembered that in 1976 he had the whole world at his feet ...
***
JACEK WSZOŁA - born December 30, 1956 in Warsaw (1.92 m tall). A graduate of the Technical School of Communications in Warsaw (unfinished law studies at the University of Warsaw and at the University of Physical Education in Warsaw). Businessman. High jumper of clubs MKS AZS and AZS AWF Warsaw; trainers: Roman Wszoła (father) and Stanisław Janowski. Wife Krystyna; children - Anna and Jacek.
Major titles: 1976 Olympic gold medalist (Montreal 1976); Olympic silver medalist (Moscow 1980); European indoor champion (San Sebastian 1977, in 1980 runner-up in Sindelfingen); academic world champion (Sofia 1977); European junior champion (Athens 1975). World record holder - 2.35 m (Eberstadt, 1980), European record holder - 2.29 (Koblenz, 1976).
In 1976 he won Złote Kolce as the best Polish athlete of the year and took second place after Irena Szewińska in the "Przegląd Sportowy" poll for the best Polish athletes (in 1980 - fifth). Eleven-time Polish champion and record holder.
Maciej Petruczenko
Source:
Sports Review
Date Created: December 30, 2021, 09:31
www.onet.pl/sport/onetsport/polak-oczarowal-swiat-listy-od-fanek-wywozono-workami/el44mpf,d87b6cc4
ONET SPORT ATHLETICS
The blond-haired young man charmed the whole world
When in 1976 he won the gold medal in the high jump at the Olympic Games in Montreal, he was watched by one and a half billion (!) TV viewers around the world. Six years later - in the final of the European championship in Athens - no one watched Jacek Wszoła, because the military commissioner ruling the sport in Poland at that time ordered that this rebellious athlete be removed from the start. Too bad choice of shoes.
Maciej Petruczenko
1.2 thousand
December 30, 2021, 09:31
You can read this text in 10 minutes
Jacek Wszoła during the Olympic Games in Montreal (1976)Jacek Wszoła during the Olympic Games in Montreal (1976) - Janusz Szewiński / Private Archive
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- Just putting on a T-shirt and tracksuit with the White Eagle made me ecstatic. For the allowances I received, I bought my dream jeans for a long time, wandering around the stores, so that almost the entire team was not late for the return flight to Warsaw - he recalls
In order to prepare him for the start in the Olympic Games in Montreal, his father poured water from the jets into the inrun of the hill. He appreciated it when he had to jump in the pouring rain in the Olympic final
He reached for the gold and in an instant, the long-haired young man, behaving very loosely, literally charmed the whole world, and his future wife Krystyna could stuff the letters from admirers at home with whole bags
The hero of the Olympic Games in 1976, Jacek Wszoła turns 65 on December 30
More such stories can be found on the main page of Onet.pl
>> The article comes from "PS Historia", a supplement to "Przegląd Sportowy", which is published every Thursday. Read more amazing stories here <<
ALSO CHECK
Polish champion said goodbye, but still starting. "I have fun again"
Diamond League: Poles without success in Paris
Wszoła does not hide that he feels uncomfortable with his old age. - The old age of me, the Olympic champion, completely disappoints me. I was terribly disappointed, although I try to fight it by engaging in various strength exercises a few times a week, as well as cycling. In my young years, I had surprising periods of physical weakness without even guessing where it was coming from. It was only in the 1990s that it was discovered that one kidney had not been functioning for a long time. This condition was the cause of high blood pressure, which I fortunately started to cope with by taking the appropriate pill systematically. I see a cardiologist once every six months. As you can see, however, due to the problem with the kidney, vision defect (at the beginning of his career, Wszoła wore glasses, then lenses - editor's note) and ankle and knee surgery,
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Like his 94-year-old aunt Wanda Traczyk-Stawska, a member of the Gray Ranks and the Home Army during World War II, wounded in the Warsaw Uprising, and today fighting with all self-denial for women's rights and respect for democracy.
Wanda is one of the three sisters in the Traczyk family (they also had a brother who died during the bombing of Warsaw by the Germans). Jacek's mother is Kazimiera Traczyk, who belongs to the aforementioned three, and is three years younger, and immediately after the war, in Warsaw's Budowlane (Skra) and Legia districts, an excellent gymnast, who in 1954 married the AZS AWF Warszawa runner, a graduate of this university, Roman Wszoła. They both studied at the University of Physical Education for one year, and they fell in love with each other during canoeing and cycling trips.
See also: The only such Polish triumph in history. The hero played with ... a broken finger
Would-be gymnast
- Since Jacek was born at a time when we were both athletes, or coaches, he had to commune with sports from an early age, because I or my wife took him to training camps. He was perhaps two or three years old when he and his mother went to Braniewo to the Legia gymnastics camp. When my mother was busy, soldiers looked after him there - recalls Mr. Roman, who will be 90 years old in a year's time, and in his form as if he was no more than twenty.
And this is not surprising, since being his son's coach before the Olympics in Montreal and Moscow, he definitely overtook him on mountain climbs, especially on the way to Kasprowy Wierch. - Am I preparing for the Olympics or are you? He asked ironically.
Perhaps the fact of taking little Jacek to the camps, where he was the fifth wheel of the cart, discouraged him from playing sports at first, but - as he himself notices now - he nevertheless succumbed to pressure from his parents, and above all his mother, who was a physical education teacher in the Glass House estate in Grochów, the primary school he attended first. No wonder that his first discipline was gymnastics.
Jacek Wszoła (P) with his father RomanJacek Wszoła (P) with his father Roman - Janusz Szewiński / Private archive
However, I started to grow quickly, and in addition, one day I fell on my head while exercising on wheels and eventually became discouraged to gymnastics - explains Jacek. - Fortunately, I moved to Primary School No. 55, right next to the Eagle Stadium, and there I met an excellent PE teacher, Jan Hojarczyk, who was fascinated by the new technique of high jump, presented at the Olympic Games in Mexico by the American d....k Fosbury.
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See also: Suitcase of dollars, FBI, and star status in the US. Here is a Pole who tricked the KGB
Hojarczyk himself was not able to make a flop jump with his back to the bar, but he explained exactly what this technique is about. We jumped, landing on a "coffin" made of sand and soon I became the master of the school, jumping in a new style, at least 1.56 m. , long jumper Zbigniew Beta, who reached 7.77 m in the long jump, as well as brothers Włodzimierz and Ireneusz Nalazków, later leading volleyball players of the country - has sentimental memories of one of the first followers of d....k Fosbury in Poland. It is worth adding that while still a child, Jacek often competed with his father in family high jump and long jump competitions, and the prize for the victory was an after-dinner jelly.
The magic of the Fosbury-flop style
Fosbury fortunately won the Olympic competition in Mexico with his style with a result of 2.24 m, clearly worse than the world record set in 1963 by the Russian Valery Brumel (2.28 m) by means of the straddle technique. Few people tried to imitate d....k, who, moreover, never managed to win the title of the US champion. In 1970, the representative of the People's Republic of China, Ni Chi-chin (Ni Zhiqin according to the current English terminology) made an unofficial improvement of the Brumel record to 2.29 m in Shanghai, and a year later the American Patrick Matzdorf was officially the record holder in Berkeley with this result.
Both record holders continued to use the metering technique. Meanwhile, the Fosbury-flop style began to spread the most in Europe, where in 1971 Lithuanian Kiejstutis Shapka, representing the USSR, won the European Championship in Helsinki. The champion of the 1972 Olympics in Munich was another USSR jumper - Estonian Juri Tarmak (2.23 m), and the second place with a result of 2.21 m was taken by Stefan Junge from the GDR (both crossover style). It was only the third in the competition (also 2.21 m) that the 18-year-old Swedish American, Dwight Stones, presented an extremely impressive-looking Fosbury-flop, which a year later, at the same Munich stadium, improved Matzdorf's record by 2.30 m, although some attempts along the way he performed metastatic.
Jacek Wszoła (P) and Dwight StonesJacek Wszoła (P) and Dwight Stones - Janusz Szewiński / Private archive
Already with the Olympic performance, Stones encouraged Jacek Wszoła, a student of the Technical College of Communications in Saska Kępa, who watched a TV broadcast (personal record 1.80 m), that he announced: - In four years I will be the Olympic champion, jumping on the flop, which amused his father every hundredth. he had not yet trained his son in high jumping. Whether he wanted it or not, he had to do it two years later, when Jacek's training Stanisław Janowski, otherwise a rugby player, responsible for training jumpers in a technical school, perfectly adapted to the sport (thanks to Roman Wszola), left his ward as a co-record holder of Poland (2,20 m - Edward Czernik's equal record from 1964), moving permanently to Zduńska Wola.
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See also: Scandal after years. Polish star destroyed by his wife ?! Here are the details
While at the Olympics in Mexico only the creator of the new style, d....k Fosbury, jumped backwards to the bar, in Munich his imitator was not only the Stones, but also Istvan Major of Hungary. After four years in Montreal, the vast majority of jumpers were already using the flop, and in 1980 in Moscow only three of the 16 finalists remained with the crossover, which a little earlier allowed the Ukrainian in the USSR colors - Volodymir Jaszczenko - to set the last world records with this technique (2.33 m in 1977 in Richmond and 2.34 m in 1978 in Tbilisi).
Jacek WszołaJacek Wszoła - Janusz Szewiński / Private archive
On May 25, 1980, in Eberstadt, Jaszczenko was dethroned by Jacek Wszoła, who jumped 2.35 m, although this record survived only one day, because on the next day Dietmar Moegenburg (West Germany) jumped the same number. At the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, the representative of the "German Doping Republic" Gerd Wessig took the world record from Wszole and Moegenburg with the result of 2.36 m, winning the gold medal. This hill meteor suddenly appeared, so suddenly disappeared from the arena. Even in the period when Jacek was still starting, the 2.40 m barrier broke (this is how much Rudolf Powarnicyn from the USSR jumped in 1985), and in 1989 the Cuban Javier Sotomayor reached 2.44 m, and in 1993 he climbed by centimeter higher. From then on, his world record, set in Salamanca, had not flinched. In this year's Olympic Games in Tokyo, three medalists jumped 2.37 m,
Technical College of Communications and MKS AZS
- In fact, it was the first time that I went with one of my parents to a sports camp while still in a pram as an infant - says Wszoła. - Over the years, it turned out that I spend all winter and summer holidays at camps, admiring the participating sports champions. Until the time came that in the competition with my father for the after-dinner jelly, I started to win the high jump. When I became a student of the Technical School of Communications, where my dad was the deputy director for sports affairs and a trainer at the same time, I could appreciate that the gym is three times the size of the average gym there. Not so quickly I became a player of MKS AZS Warszawa, gaining access to the best training facilities in Poland. In the first class of technical secondary school I had only the fourth result in the high jump, but in the third I improved by 20 cm and won the club championship. From the group of people training with me, I remember, among others the future European champion in the indoor 60 m hurdles Romuald Giegiel. For a short time, Marian Woronin, the future European record holder in the 100 m race, was with us, whose brother-in-law was one of the teachers there.
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See also: He killed while drunk, jumped from the 9th floor. The Polish star could not stand it
- My model of high jumper in MKS AZS was exceptionally strong and lively Zbyszek Wiśniewski (later Polish ringo champion - editor's note). But then Włodzimierz Perka, the future husband of beautiful Danuta Wołosz, one of the best 100 m hurdles runners in the world, jumped higher than us. With time, I took the place of the club leader in the high jump. The big breakthrough in my career, still a junior, was my performance in the match of the adult national team against Germany in Kassel, where I equaled Edward Czernik's Polish record of 2.20 m. Just putting on a T-shirt and tracksuit with the White Eagle made me ecstatic. For the allowances I received, I bought my dream jeans for a long time, wandering around the stores, so that almost the entire team was not late for the return flight to Warsaw - laughs Jacek, who still remembers that in 1973 he set a life record of 2,
In 1974, having already run a runner-up in the student gymnasium (Athens 1973), he achieved a plus not only the equalization of Edward Czernik's Polish record, but also fifth place in the European Senior Championships in Rome, where he jumped 2.19 m, and by the way together with our other representative in the high jump, Janusz Wrzosek (2.05 m - he was eliminated in the qualifying round), visited the historical places of the Eternal City.
- If I had two fewer knocks, I would have won a bronze medal, which would be a great success for the 18-year-old, notes Wszoła, years later, who then lacked experience in preparing such small things as a container with water and a wet towel, necessary in a Mediterranean climate. But he was happy anyway, starting in the Polish national team, next to the main heroine of this championship, sprinter Irena Szewińska, obstacle player Bronisław Malinowski, pole-vaulter Władysław Kozakiewicz, ten-legged player Ryszard Skowronek, and the victory in the high jump of the Danish medical graduate Jesper Torring (2.25 m) was accepted with full respect. The following season he finally won his first international title, becoming European junior champion in Athens.
Jacek Wszoła, Irena Szewińska and Tadeusz ŚlusarskiJacek Wszoła, Irena Szewińska and Tadeusz Ślusarski - Janusz Szewiński / Private archive
Taking part in the youthful "spontaneity", Wszoła admits today that at that time he did not notice such a problem as illegal doping.
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- Something was just reading there in the "Przegląd Sportowy" about the Swedish discobolus Ricky Bruch, who claimed that due to the use of steroids his body falls off his bones, but I treated it as media nonsense. And I could not imagine the use of pharmacological doping in running and jumping at all - now recalls Wszoła, who, however, at the Olympic Games in Montreal had to come across the sad fact of disqualifying two Polish representatives for steroid doping: Danuta Rosani, who was not even a finalist of the discobolus, and Zbigniew weightlifter. Kaczmarek, who was deprived of the gold medal ...
Father behind the fence ...
Although Jacek flew to Montreal with his father as a coach, Roman was not a member of the official team. He lived at an angle with the Polish people who looked after him, and he helped his son during training, leaning over the fence. In the end, it turned out that the art of prediction was the most important. While still at the camp in Spała Wszoła, the senior prepared Jacek for the possibility of a downpour during the Olympic competition and, in order to get him used to such conditions, he often poured the Spała run-up with water from the hose.
When he surprised me for the first time, I wasted a pair of shoes in the water in which I trained, but when I had to jump in pouring rain in Montreal, such a scenario was not new to me, and anyway I was the type of jumper who - unlike my idol, then already the world record holder with the result of Dwight Stones 2.30 m, does not take a quick run-up - explains Wszoła.
- Stones was very afraid of the rain and even before the start he rebuked the hosts that they had not completed the planned construction of the Olympic stadium with a sliding roof. The rain, unfortunately for him, did fall, and when it came to the showdown between Stones and Canadian Greg Joy, we had to mop ourselves to clear the puddles on the litter. From all of this I came out unscathed, winning the competition with 2.25 m, which was an Olympic record, Joy took second place with 2.23 m, and Stones had to settle for third place, just like in Munich. And for him it was little consolation that four days later in Philadelphia he raised his world record to a height of 2.31 meters - the winner of 1976 concludes his story.
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Letters from admirers
After the Montreal Olympics, he won and lost once, but the most important was the colossal propaganda effect of the victory in the Olympics, watched by 1.5 billion people. In an instant, the long-haired young man, behaving very loosely, literally enchanted the whole world, and his future wife Krystyna could stuff the letters at home with whole bags.
- After the competition, what surprised me the most was that the audience - despite the rain - did not leave the stands. At first, I assumed that people were simply waiting for the Poland-GDR final football match planned there, but they really wanted to applaud their compatriot Greg Joy to the end - years later the undisputed winner, who treated the Olympic performance at the time, was like a friendly party.
- Earlier, I noticed that a French guy, Guy Wire, was lighting a cigarette, who was getting ready to take off over the 100 m hurdles. I decided to follow in his footsteps and at least twice during my competition I asked the judge to escort me to the gate of the stadium and there I dusty Marlboro brought from the country each time. Now it would be impossible, but then such things were still tolerated - admits Wszoła, adding self-critically that he has not given up smoking until today. "I envy my wife who quit cigarettes once and for all," he says.
Tiger vs Adidas
When, four years after Montreal, he won only a silver medal at the Olympics in Moscow, he might have been disappointed, but he had the right to suppose that he had found a conqueror in doping Wessig. More than purely sports, he was tired of the details of jumping shoes.
In Montreal, he jumped in Adidas' national contract with Poland, specially sewn on site by this company. Then, however, he decided to buy slippers from the Japanese company Tiger-Onitsuka. For this reason, the GKKFiS military commissioner Wacław Feryniec, established under martial law, ordered him to be removed from the competition in the final competition of the 1982 European Championships in Athens and disqualified for several months. Jacek has already had an ankle surgery behind him, which he damaged on a makeshift tartan in the Poznań hall. All this meant that the last part of the career of the two-time Olympic medalist was not very effective.
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But years later it is only remembered that in 1976 he had the whole world at his feet ...
***
JACEK WSZOŁA - born December 30, 1956 in Warsaw (1.92 m tall). A graduate of the Technical School of Communications in Warsaw (unfinished law studies at the University of Warsaw and at the University of Physical Education in Warsaw). Businessman. High jumper of clubs MKS AZS and AZS AWF Warsaw; trainers: Roman Wszoła (father) and Stanisław Janowski. Wife Krystyna; children - Anna and Jacek.
Major titles: 1976 Olympic gold medalist (Montreal 1976); Olympic silver medalist (Moscow 1980); European indoor champion (San Sebastian 1977, in 1980 runner-up in Sindelfingen); academic world champion (Sofia 1977); European junior champion (Athens 1975). World record holder - 2.35 m (Eberstadt, 1980), European record holder - 2.29 (Koblenz, 1976).
In 1976 he won Złote Kolce as the best Polish athlete of the year and took second place after Irena Szewińska in the "Przegląd Sportowy" poll for the best Polish athletes (in 1980 - fifth). Eleven-time Polish champion and record holder.
Maciej Petruczenko
Source:
Sports Review
Date Created: December 30, 2021, 09:31