Mateusz Kusznierewicz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mateusz Kusznierewicz

Mateusz Kusznierewicz (born April 29, 1975 in Warsaw ) is a Polish sailor , Olympic champion , three-time world and multiple European champion. He is the holder of the Order of Polonia Restituta , the second highest civil honor of the Third Polish Republic .

Sports training

The athlete lives in Warsaw and is a member of the Yacht Club Polski Warszawa (YKP). He is trained by Andrzej Zawieja, who finished 12th in a Finn dinghy at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Acapulco . Kusznierewicz studied at the Warsaw Faculty of Physical Education of the Józef Piłsudski Sports College ( Akademia Wychowania Fizycznego Józefa Piłsudskiego w Warszawie ), the largest Polish university for this discipline.

He began sailing at the age of six under the guidance of his father and first trainer Zbigniew. In his first competition, the youth club championship on the Zalew Zegrzyński reservoir , he took part in 1984 at the age of nine. He started in the Optimist ( Opti ), a small and light dinghy for children and young people. In 1985 he won his first regatta , the Pucharze Spójnia , in the same boat class and on the same lake .

Sporting successes

Awards

Mateusz Kusznierewicz achieved his greatest successes in the one-man dinghy Finn Dinghi , in which he is the most successful Polish sailor to date. In 1998, the Polish Foreign Minister Bronisław Geremek honored the ten-time national champion as the world's most popular Polish athlete. In 2004 he was named the best sailor in Poland and in 1999 the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) named him World Sailor of the Year ( ISAF Rolex World Sailor of the Year Awards ). The award represents the highest distinction that a sailor can receive for outstanding performance in the sailing world. In 1996 President Aleksander Kwaśniewski awarded him the knightly class and in 2004 the officer class of the Order Polonia Restituta , the second highest civil honor of the Third Polish Republic .

Medals and Olympic participation

In 1993, still as a junior, Mateusz Kusznierewicz won his first Polish championship (in the Finn dinghy) and in 1994 the European Junior Championship (in the OK dinghy ) for the first time . Among his greatest international rivals were the Belgian Sébastien Godefroid , with whom he competed head-to-head in the Finn dinghy between 1996 and 2001 at the Olympics, the World and European Championships, and then the Englishman Ben Ainslie ( King Ben ).

1996 to 2001

Marina of the Hospitalet de l'Infant ; it was here that Kusznierewicz won his first international silver medal in 1996
Gold medal at the 2000 World Cup: Portland Harbor, Weymouth

Kusznierewicz celebrated his first major international success at the European Sailing Championships in 1996 when he won the silver medal in Hospitalet de l'Infant ahead of Godefroid. In the same year he won the gold medal in the sailing waters of the Savannah River at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta ; As a silver medalist, Godefroid again crossed the finish line directly behind Kusznierewicz. At the European Championships in Vilamoura in 1998 Godefroid won and relegated Kusznierewicz to fifth place. In the same year he received his first gold medal at the sailing world championships in Athens . The Pole finished the European Championships in 1999 in Ostend (behind Iain Percy ) as well as the World Championships in Melbourne (behind Fredrik Lööf ) on silver. Two more gold medals followed in 2000 when he was the first to cross the finish line both at the European Championships in Palma de Mallorca and at the World Championships in Weymouth , again ahead of runner-up Godefroid in Weymouth. At the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney , he missed a medal in fourth place in the Olympic Sailing Shore in Rushcutters Bay. Godefroid finished seventh, with Iain Percy winning. In 2001 in Marblehead the Belgian was able to turn the result for the last time and won the world championship before Kusznierewicz.

2002 to 2008

In the following international regattas, the Englishman Ben Ainslie, who had previously achieved great success in the laser radial and switched to the Finn dinghy in 2001, became his toughest competitor. At the 2002 World Cup in Piraeus , Ainslie, OBE and, alongside Robert Scheidt, were the only athletes to have been twice named World Sailor of the Year by the ISAF, placing him in second place. In the following years he had nothing more to oppose the Englishman. Ainslie won the 2003, 2004 and 2005 World Championships in succession and also the gold medal in the Agios Kosmas Olympic Sailing Center at the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics . For Kusznierewicz only an Olympic bronze medal in Athens, a silver medal at the European Championships in Långedrag 2003 and a gold medal at the European Championships 2004 in La Rochelle remained during this time .

At the international level, it then became quiet about Mateusz Kusznierewicz. In 2005 he changed the boat class and switched from the Finn-Dinghi (one-man boat) to the star boat . In the open two-man keelboat he formed a crew with Dominik Życki . It wasn't until 2008 that the team returned to the medal ranks in international sailing regattas and won the gold medal at the World Championships in Miami . The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing ended Kusznierewicz / Życki in fourth place at the Qingdao International Sailing Center . (Ainslie also won gold in the Finn dinghy at this Olympics.)

Overview

EM = European Sailing Championships (only places one to three), WM = World Sailing Championships (only places one to three), OLY = Summer Olympic Games (all places); detailed tables with all the positions of the sailor can be found in the Polish Wikipedia article Mateusz Kusznierewicz .

Crack Finn dinghy
  • 1996: Silver: EM Finn
  • 1996: Gold: OLY Finn
  • 1998: Gold: WM Finn
  • 1999: Silver: EM Finn
  • 1999: Silver: WM Finn
  • 2000: Gold: EM Finn
  • 2000: Gold: WM Finn
  • 2000: 4th place: OLY Finn
  • 2001: Silver: WM Finn
  • 2002: Silver: WM Finn
  • 2003: Silver: EM Finn
  • 2004: Gold: EM Finn
  • 2004: Bronze: OLY Finn
  • 2008: Gold: WM Star (with Dominik Życki)
  • 2008: 4th place: OLY Star (with Dominik Życki)

One of the many other competitions that Mateusz Kusznierewicz contested was the largest sailing event in the world, the Kiel Week . In the Finn Dinghi class he won the regatta in 1998, 1999 and 2002.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b ISAF World Sailing  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Short biography Mateusz Kusznierewicz (English, accessed March 7, 2009)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / sailing.org  
  2. ↑ Study in Warsaw (accessed March 7, 2009)
  3. ↑ a b NBC Beijing 2008 Short biography Mateusz Kusznierewicz (English, accessed March 8, 2009)
  4. ↑ Omega Press, Mateusz Kusznierewicz (English, accessed March 7, 2009)
  5. ↑ Mateusz Kusznierewicz  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ( Microsoft PowerPoint ; English; accessed March 7, 2009; 484 kB)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.brzozowa.pl  
  6. ↑ Sport Complete Sailing - World and European Championships Men, Finn Dinghy (accessed March 7, 2009)
  7. ↑ As of February 2009
  8. ↑ Mateusz Kusznierewicz in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original ), accessed March 8, 2009
  9. ^ Kieler Woche, list of winners Finn-Dinghi (accessed March 8, 2009)
personal data
SURNAME Kusznierewicz, Mateusz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish sailor, Olympic champion and world champion
DATE OF BIRTH April 29, 1975
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw