Three Polish athletes have accomplished the extraordinary achievement of winning three or more Olympic gold medals in individual events.
They are perhaps not global megastars, not even the most famous sports people in Poland. Why?
One reason is that they are all athletes in disciplines that tend not to favour multi-disciplinary athletes. Swimming, sprinting and gymnastics, for example, include disciplines that are "quite close" to each other, so history has seen several titans of sport there who have dominated several disciplines. The most obvious example would be the absolute champion of champions of the Olympic Games - the American swimmer Michael Phelps with a staggering 16 Olympic medals, including 13 gold.
Tied second place on the Polish Podium
Two Polish athletes on the "Gold Medal Podium" share the career "silver" - Anita Włodarczyk and Kamil Stoch have both won 3 Olympic gold medals.
Anita Włodarczyk - hammer thrower
Recently, the press, including the Polish press, has paid little attention to this supreme athlete. The media - and perhaps especially social media - loves a winner and in the 2024 Paris Olympics, Anita Wlodarczyk "only" came fourth. But Paris was her fifth Olympic Games, following London (2012), Rio (2016) and Tokyo (2020) where she took the gold every time.
As of the end of the Paris Olympics, Włodarczyk was still the world record holder too.
Kamil Stoch - ski jumper
"Seeing how difficult it is to win an Olympic gold, I appreciate all the more what Kamil Stoch did. In one Olympic Games he won 2 gold medals, including one after a fall during training. 4 years later, he defended his title - incredible. the GOAT."
Kamil Stoch won two individual gold medals in the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014 and one in 2018 in Pyeongchang. Stoch also won team bronze in for the Large Hill in 2018, bringing his total Olympic medal tally to four, the same number as...
The "Gold Medal Winner" - Robert Korzeniowski - walker
Robert Korzeniowski won gold in the 50km walk in 1996, 2000 and 2004. In the 2000 Olympics in Sydney he also added the 20 km walk. This makes him Poland's greatest Olympian.
"We may laugh at the funny nose plasters, but Korzeniowski won gold in Atlanta with one on his nose :)"
Sources: X
pt
