Hi from Poland. For the March theme we need to talk about sports, so I will tell you a bit more about famous sports in Poland.
In Poland, volleyball is very famous and recognized in the country. In the rest of the world, Poland is associated with pierogi (dumplings), a hard historical past, ... but also volleyball. The Polish national men's volleyball team has very good athletes. This team is controlled by the Polish Volleyball Federation, which represents the country in international competitions and friendly matches. So Poland is one of the world's strongest teams; it's the reigning World Champion since 2014. Currently they are ranked 4th in the ranking of the International Federation of Volleyball. Poland was the world champion in 1974, 2014 and 2018. They are trained by a Belgium guy: Vital Heynen. There are a lot of very good players in this team, but one has made history: Piotr Gruszka. Piotr Gruszka is an old Polish volleyball player born on March 8, 1977 in Oświęcim . He is 2.06 m tall and plays receiver-attacker. He has 450 caps for the Polish national team, which is the national record. Yes, he marked history because of his national selection record. He played in the Polish team but also in the French and Italian teams. As I said before Poland has been world champion three times; but there are several years where they were finalists like in 1965, 2006 and 2019. Also, they won the European Championship in 2009. They were finalists many times, such as in 1975, 1977, 1979, 1981 and 1983. Also they participated many times in the Olympics Games. They won it in 1976, qualified to participate in 1964, 1984, 1989, 1992, and 2000, finished in fifth place in 1968, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 and finally were fourth in 1980. In 2019, Poland had a total of 282 medals at the Summer Olympics, including 66 gold, as well as 22 medals including 7 gold for the Winter Olympics. So globally it’s a very good team. They participate and win at a lot of competitions. In relation to the important players, I talked earlier about Piotr Gruszka but there are also Daniel Pliński, Łukasz Kadziewicz, Sebastian Świderski, Michał Winiarski, Mariusz Wlazły and Paweł Zagumny (I know, all these names are so hard to pronounce!!). The Polish women's volleyball team is composed of the best Polish players selected by the Polish Volleyball Federation . It is currently ranked 22nd in the International Volleyball Federation. Yes, the Polish Volleyball team is famous for its performance but it is not the most practiced sport in Poland. Polish people especially love football and horse riding. So this is volleyball in Poland, I hope you learned a bit more about them ! Bye, see you next month.
- Clémence Palanque - Poland
Polish national men's volleyball team