Mateusz Kusznierewicz
Mateusz Kusznierewicz ( born April 29, 1975 in Warsaw) is a Polish sailor, Olympic champion, three-time World and multiple European champion. He was awarded the Order of Polonia Restituta, the second highest civilian award of the Third Polish Republic.
Athletic training
The sportsman lives in Warsaw and is a member of the yacht club Polski Warszawa ( YKP ). He is trained by Andrzej Zawieja, the 1968 had occupied the 12th place in Acapulco in Finn dinghy at the Summer Olympics in 1968. Kusznierewicz studied at the Warsaw School of Physical Education of Józef Piłsudski Sports Academy ( Akademia Wychowania Fizycznego Józefa Piłsudskiego w Warszawie ), the largest Polish university for this discipline.
With the sailing he began at the age of six years under the guidance of his father and first coach Zbigniew. On his first competition, the Youth Club Championship on the reservoir Zalew Zegrzyński he took part in 1984 at the age of nine years. He started in the Optimist ( Opti ), a small and lightweight dinghy for children and adolescents. In the same boat class and on the same lake, he won his first race in 1985, the Pucharze Spójnia.
Sporting successes
Awards
His greatest successes were achieved by Mateusz Kusznierewicz in the one-man dinghy Finn dinghy in which he is the most successful Polish sailors. In 1998, the Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek ten times the national champions from the world's most popular Polish athletes. In 2004 he was honored as the best sailors in Poland, and in 1999 the International Sailing Federation (ISAF ) had him declared a World Sailor of the Year (ISAF Rolex World Sailor of the Year Awards ). The price represents the highest award that can receive for its excellence in the world of sailing a sailor, or a sailor. 1996 President Aleksander Kwasniewski awarded him the Knight class and 2004, the officer class of the Order of Polonia Restituta, the second highest civilian award of the Third Polish Republic.
Medals and Olympic participation
1993, still in the junior age, Mateusz Kusznierewicz won its first Polish Championship ( in Finn - Dinghy ) and 1994 for the first time the European Junior Championship ( in the OK dinghy ). His biggest international rivals, the Belgian Sébastien Godefroid, with whom he at the Olympics, the World and European Championships, a head - to-head races in the Finn Dinghy delivered between 1996 and 2001, and then the Englishman Ben Ainslie included (King Ben ).
1996-2001
His first major international success came at the boat Kusznierewicz European Championships in 1996 when he won the silver medal in Hospitalet de l'Infant ago Godefroid. In the same year he won in the sailing waters of the Savannah River at the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, the gold medal; Godefroid came again as silver medalist directly behind Kusznierewicz the finish. At the European Championships in 1998 in Vilamoura triumphed Godefroid and referred Kusznierewicz to fifth place. In the same year he received his first gold medal in Athens in World Sailing Championships. The 1999 European Championships in Ostend ended the poles ( behind Iain Percy ) as well as the World Championships in Melbourne ( behind Fredrik Lööf ) on the silver medal. Two more gold medals followed in 2000, when he sailed both at the European Championships in Palma de Mallorca, as well as at the World Championships in Weymouth was the first across the finish line in Weymouth again ahead of second place Godefroid. At the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000, he missed the Olympic Sailing Shore in Rushcutters Bay with fourth place medal. Godefroid came seventh in the finish, it won Iain Percy. 2001 in Marblehead, the Belgian could turn the result for the last time and won Kusznierewicz before the World Cup.
2002-2008
The following international regattas, the Englishman Ben Ainslie, who had achieved great success in the laser radial and was in the Finn - Dinghy changed in 2001, developed into its toughest competitors. Already at the World Cup 2002 in Piraeus referred him Ainslie, OBE and elected next Robert Scheidt bislangals only athlete of the ISAF World Sailor of the Year twice, on the second place. In the following years he had to oppose the British nothing more. Ainslie won consecutively the world championships in 2003, 2004 and 2005 and the gold medal in Agios Kosmas Olympic Sailing Centre in the Olympic Summer Games 2004 in Athens. For Kusznierewicz remained at this time only an Olympic bronze medal in Athens, a silver medal at the European Championships in 2003 and Långedrag a gold medal at the 2004 European Championships in La Rochelle.
At the international level, it was then quiet around Mateusz Kusznierewicz. 2005 he joined the class of boat and went down from the Finn dinghy ( man boat ) into the Star boat. In the open two-man keelboat he formed a crew with Dominik Życki. Only in 2008 the team came in international sailing regattas back into the medals and won the gold medal at the World Championships in Miami. The 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing ended Kusznierewicz / Życki the International Sailing Center in Qingdao in fourth place. ( Ainslie won gold at these Games in the Finn - Dinghy. )
Survey
Among the many other competitions that denied Mateusz Kusznierewicz, was one of the largest sailing event in the world, the Kieler Woche. In the Finn dinghy class, he won the regatta 1998,1999 and 2002.