After Poland regained its independence, all areas of life developed in the country. Sport did too. And so much so that in the following twenty years fans lived to see several foreign successes.

Two football pals

After 123 years of slavery, Poland regained its sovereignty in 1918. Athletes were finally able to compete under the white and red flag. This opportunity was also provided by the sports associations that were formed. The football one was established on 21 December 1919 in Warsaw. One of the first goals of the Polish Football Association was to send a football team to the Games of the Seventh Olympiad in Antwerp in 1920. Selected players prepared for the start, but at some point sport was put on the back burner. The Soviet army was advancing towards Warsaw from the east. The recently regained independence had to be defended.

It was only when the war with the Bolsheviks came to an end that the idea of international matches was revived. The Poles proposed a meeting to the Austrians, but the latter did not respond to the letters sent. Instead, the Hungarians sent an invitation and the date was set for 18 December 1921.

Jozef Szkolnikowski of the PZPN Games Department and Cracovia coach Imre Pozsonym were responsible for the composition of the national team. At the end of November and the beginning of December, the team played control matches. And then, on 16 December 1921, the Poles boarded a train and travelled to Hungary. The journey lasted more than thirty hours.

The venue for the match was Hungária körúti stadium in Budapest. At 13:50 the game started. And the hosts prevailed. They dominated the Poles tactically and technically. In the 18th minute Szabó scored a goal, as it later turned out the only one of the day. A great gesture was shown by Wacław Kuchar, who could have led to a draw in the first half, but instead of shooting at an empty goal, he ran up to the Hungarian goalkeeper, who had been hit with the ball earlier, to help him. The hosts' attacks continued in the second half, but Jan Loth did a great job in the Polish goal.

Despite the defeat, the attitude of the Poles was appreciated on the pitch. Dr Henryk Leser wrote in the Tygodnik Sportowy:

"So. We are not yet on a par with foreign countries. We still have a lot to learn, we still have to work patiently and vigorously on ourselves. - However, we have absolutely no reason to be dissatisfied. On the contrary, for our work so far, for our current level - this result is good, it is a success."

Why was the lost match among the successes of Polish sport in the inter-war period? Because it was a meeting steeped in symbolism. Here were Poles, after decades spent under partition, stepping out into a foreign stadium in the national colours, competing in a sport that was already one of the most popular in the world.

France. 1924

The start of the Polish national team at the 1924 Olympic Games was of similar significance. First, in January, the International Winter Sports Week began, officially recognised by the IOC as the First Olympic Winter Games. The Poles made an appearance at this event. Admittedly, they were not successful in sport. However, it was the first time they presented their skills on snow and ice to the world. Interestingly, the Polish ensign was a journalist, Kazimierz Smogorzewski. This was because our athletes were late for the opening ceremony.

A few weeks later, on 4 May 1924, the Eighth Summer Olympics began in Paris, at which the 81-member Polish team made its debut. The national team consisted mainly of men. There was only one exception - the fencing player Wanda Dubieńska. For the first time in history, the white-and-red banner was carried into the summer Olympic salons by athlete Sławosz Szydłowski. Nevertheless, the Poles' departure would have been highly questionable had it not been for public fundraising. It was compatriots, often fans or activists, who sought funds so that the Olympians could enter the competition.

And this one turned out to be historic. In the Paris Games, the red and white team won two medals. The silver went to the team of track cyclists in the track race. On 27 July 1924 at the Stadion Vélodrome de Vincennes, Jozef Lange, Jan Lazarski, Tomasz Stankiewicz and Franciszek Szymczyk were feeling excellent. On their way to the final, they beat the cycling giants: the Belgians and the French. In the decisive race for the gold medal, they rode more relaxed, knowing that they would win the medal anyway. The Italians tried much harder and in the end beat the Poles. By eight seconds.

On the same day, Lieutenant Adam Królikiewicz won the bronze medal in the equestrian jumping competition on Picador. To this day it is still debated which bronze was the first. It has become established that the one won by the riders. However, there is no shortage of opinions that it was Królikiewicz who could have been the first Polish Olympic medallist. After all, both disciplines were contested at similar times...

Golden Halina

It was 31 July 1928, when the world's best female discus throwers faced off for the Olympic championships. At the Olympisch Stadion in Amsterdam, the favourite was a Pole, Halina Konopacka. Born on 26 February 1900 in Rawa Mazowiecka, the sportswoman had so far won every competition in her field. In the Dutch capital, where women competed for the first time in the history of Olympism, Konopacka could only lose to herself.

The competition began with throws in two groups. In order to advance to the final, a minimum distance of 35 metres had to be achieved. The Pole accomplished this task without any problems. In the decisive attempts she went to an even higher level. In one of them she even broke the world record (39.62m) and won the first Olympic gold for Poland. After the competition she said:

"I won and I didn't have the strength to be happy with my victory. I saw everyone around me rejoicing. I was dumbfounded by the hearty handshakes, the all-embracing displays of affection from myself and strangers, and these floods of flowers, flowers...".

Three years later, the Olympic gold medallist withdrew from sport. Instead, she appeared at salons, wrote poems and painted pictures. In 1939, she helped her husband Ignacy Matuszewski to evacuate the gold of the Bank of Poland. She died on 28 January 1989 in Daytona Beach, USA.

Staszka and Janusz

Four years later, the Olympic team left for Los Angeles. Even before the Games, a lot of fuss was made about Stanisława Walasiewicz, who had started her running adventure in the United States, to which she had emigrated with her family in 1912. Walasiewiczówna decided that she would compete for the country of her ancestors. The American public was appalled by this decision. And then attacked the runner, suggesting that she was not a woman. Why the media offensive?

Because Walasiewiczówna was not the first better sprinter. She ran really fast on treadmills, and at the one in Los Angeles, she left no illusions to her rivals, winning the 100m final. "Gazeta Lwowska" described the historic run as follows:

"Walasiewiczówna triumphed at the Los Angeles Olympics, winning the 100m run in a time of 11.9 seconds, which equals a new world and Olympic record. Walasiewiczówna, who appeared for the first time under her proper name and not, as before, 'Stella Welsh, fought a fierce battle in the above run with Canadian athlete Stricke, whom she overtook at the finish by 30 cm.'

The other hero of the few Polish expedition there was Janusz Kusociński. This long-distance runner competed in the 10,000m run, on 31 July 1932 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. "Kusy" was one of the most popular athletes in Poland at the time and an Olympic hopeful. In the United States, he lived up to expectations. But not without problems.

The Pole won, breaking the world record in the process (30:11.4). He also ended the Olympic domination of the Finns in this competition, which had lasted since 1920. But he paid for all this with a serious foot injury that ruled him out of competition over a distance twice as short. The press delighted in this triumph. The "Illustrowany Kuryer Codzienny" wrote as follows:

"Kusociński's victory is an excellent propaganda for Poland, all the more so because it took place in front of crowds of the American Polonia, looking with pride and anxiety at the representatives of our sport at the same time. Kusociński's success is a triple success: a success for the world, for the American Polish community and for Poland itself."

The Olympic champion from Los Angeles turned out to be not only an outstanding athlete, but also a patriot. He died in 1940 in Palmiry, detained and interrogated earlier by the Gestapo.

Jadwiga, the runner-up

Today, the big star of international courts is Iga Świątek. A few years ago, Agnieszka Radwańska was doing quite well. Before the outbreak of World War II, the Poles also had a woman who was fabulous with a tennis racket. Her name was Jadwiga Jędrzejowska. She was born in Krakow in 1912. Although tennis was considered an elite sport at the time, Jadzia, who came from a working-class family, climbed to the absolute top.

In early July 1937, Jędrzejowska played in the final of the highly prestigious Wimbledon tournament. The Pole, after an unprecedentedly exciting clash, had to accept the superiority of the British player, Dorothy Round. The match was extremely close, but in the final moments of the third set, at 5:5, the Pole's nerves ate away at her. Ultimately, she lost that set and the entire match. At home, despite the defeat, there was still talk of a great feat by the Cracovian. Not the first and not the last. After that tournament, Jadwiga was accosted by journalists during a banquet. They asked about the reasons for the loss:

"I was lost to nerves. At the decisive moment I broke down. I couldn't keep up the hard pace I had set myself. And then there were the double faults! Eight in one match! This probably best shows my nervousness. I also attribute a large percentage of my failure to the fact that I have never played with Round before. I'm just so unlucky that I always lose the first game to a good tennis player "4, said the runner-up.

Jadwiga Jędrzejowska was a true, inter-war ambassador of Polish sport.

The vice-champion, who was the champion

Ski jumping was a very popular and eagerly watched sport in the interwar period. Suffice it to say that the Poles organised the world championships in Nordic skiing twice at that time (1929 and 1939). In 1938 this winter sport celebrated one of its greatest triumphs in history. Stanislaw Marusarz, a versatile skier called "Grandpa", won the silver medal of the world championships in Lahti, Finland. However, it was claimed that he was supposed to win. And that he was simply cheated.

On 27 February 1938 on the Salpausselkä hill in Lahti, it was Marusarz who landed the longest jump. In two attempts he jumped a total of 5.5 metres further than the Norwegian Asbjørn Ruud, one of the three brilliant brothers. The fans around the hill gave him an ovation. The judges... waited. Because the final decisions dragged on. They only went to the athletes in the evening. "Przegląd Sportowy":

"We waited a long, very long time - until 8pm in the evening - for the result of the judges' deliberations. It turns out that Ruud got so much better style marks that he made up 5.5 metres of Staszek's length and is first with a difference of 0.3 points.

We have given the judges' marks as they were announced. We refrain from discussing and commenting. However, I firmly believe that Stanislaw Marusarz was the best jumper in this competition. Maybe Ruud or Andersen jumped more elegantly than him, maybe Bradl skis more evenly. All this is possible. Nevertheless, Staszek Marusarz, by achieving formally the vice-championship - morally the world championship, stood at the zenith of his career and pushed Polish skiing to previously unattainable heights."

From accounts that have survived, even the winning Norwegian had mixed feelings after the results were announced. Nevertheless, Marusarz's success was undoubtedly the crowning achievement of the pre-war skiers' efforts.