"VAN" (Sports Desk - 15.01.2026) :: Whitewater kayaker Klaudia Zwolińska was named Poland's best athlete of 2025 in the 91st edition of the "Przegląd Sportowy" poll.
The 27-year-old athlete made history in the sport by winning medals in all three disciplines at the 2025 World Championships in Penrith, Australia – gold in the K1 and C1 slalom events and bronze in the cross-country event.
Second place went to Iga Świątek, the current WTA number two and winner of the poll in 2022 and 2023, and third place went to volleyball player Wilfredo Leon, who won the Nations League with the national team and won a bronze medal at the World Championships.
"I didn't expect this. I'm shocked. When I was a child, I dreamed of winning this competition," admitted Zwolińska, who 12 months earlier, as runner-up at the XXXIII Olympiad in Paris, finished ninth in the poll.
Fourth place went to six-time speedway world champion Bartosz Zmarzlik, while voters awarded fifth place to racing driver Robert Kubica. The winner of the 2008 competition, in 2025, gained fame for his triumph in the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The next places were taken by Maria Żodzik, runner-up in the world high jump, Robert Lewandowski, a football player for the Polish and Barcelona national teams, and Mateusz Ponitka, captain of the national basketball team, the eighth-place European Championship team.
Last year's winner, Aleksandra Mirosław, a champion and world record holder in sport climbing, finished ninth. Time trial. The top ten was completed by European rally champion Mikołaj Marczyk.
Tomasz Dylak, coach of the women's boxing team, whose players won three World Championship medals in 2025, among others, was named Coach of the Year.
The volleyball team, which returned from the World Championships in the Philippines with a bronze medal and previously triumphed in the Nations League, was named Team of the Year.
The Champion of the Century statuettes – commemorating the centenary of the first "PS" poll – were awarded to former cross-country skier Justyna Kowalczyk, who has won the competition most often, five times, and footballer Robert Lewandowski, a three-time winner who placed in the top ten 13 times.
The Super Champion for lifetime achievements went to Natalia Partyka, a six-time Paralympic champion and four-time Olympic table tennis participant.
"For many years, I have had the great privilege of combining these two worlds, even though sport is truly one," she said on the stage of the Grand Theatre in Warsaw.
The jury named the Great Warsaw Race, traditionally the culmination of the horse racing season at the capital's Służewiec track, as the "Event of the Year."
The "Feat of the Year" took place on September 22nd, when Andrzej Bargiel first conquered Mount Everest and then skied down from the world's highest mountain to its base without the support of bottled oxygen.
The youngest winner of the competition was Irena Kirszenstein in 1965, at the age of 19 years and 221 days.
Robert Lewandowski finished in the top ten thirteen times between 2011 and 2025.
The first plebiscite in 1926 was won by one of Poland's most versatile athletes in history – Wacła Kuchar, who achieved great success in team sports (Polish champion in football and ice hockey with Pogoń Lwów, figure and speed scating.
The organizer of the plebiscite, "Przegląd Sportowy," is the oldest Polish sports newspaper, founded on May 21, 1921, in Krakow and published in Warsaw since 1925.
The initiator of the plebiscite, now celebrating its 100th anniversary, was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper from 1926 to 1931, and winner of the gold medal in the literary competition at the 9th Olympiad in Amsterdam.
Cr-AIPS
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