I was wondering for a long time what to write about the starts of our team at this year’s 31^st World Championships which took place between 7^th and 13^thof September 2009 in Italy. On one hand I would like to describe all the duels of our armwrestlers and on the other the amount of then and at the same the duels makes it impossible to analyze each Polish sports men. So let’s focus at least a bit on the starts of the Poles on the world armwrestling field.

The first two days of the tournaments (9^th of the September the left hand rivalry and 10^th of September the right hand) were the starts of male and female juniors, disabled, masters and grand masters. Here our team was represented by 17 competitors (6 male juniors, 5 female juniors, 1 disables contestant, 3 masters and 2 grand masters) our representatives had a hard nut to crack. The unusual cast ( 20 to 30 representatives in each weight category). Additionally, the first fights showed the extraordinary sports level. Simply worldwide!

Junior males and females were first crack at. We had great expectations. Cause in direct struggles our country was represented by this year’s European Championships – Bulgaria 2009 medalists. Additionally the earliest predictions of our armwrestlers about the good form made us watch each duel of our fellow-citizens like a hen on a hot girdle. Anyway each start of white and red T-shirt dressed competitors restrained Polish followers observing the struggles in the newly built sports hall in the city of Porto Viro. As the first one we saw Michalina Romanska from Koszalin. And here we’ve got! Sudden surprise – brown in the lowest junior female up to 45kg category left and right hand. The competitor of UKS 16 Koszalin both in the left hand and right hand rivalry had to recognize the superiority of two Russian representatives. On that day the competitors from Eastern broad were unfortunately better than our armwrestler from Koszalin. However the first two Michalina’s medals made us really optimistic. We silently we counted for the same amount of medals as at European Championships in Bulgaria ( then we came back to Poland with 17 medals).

Although all of our juniors fought the best as they could by the armwrestling tables only Natan Kajdas (up to 80kg category)from Jaworzno managed to win the next medal  in the right hand rivalry. Although the representative from Jaworzno was out of the medal zone(5^th place) in left hand, he excelled himself in right hand. After the hard semifinal fight (I do not mention the elimination fights) with armwrestlers from Belarus - Dzimitry Khtialiou, in final he met his fellow-citizen - Aliaksander Laban. Here Natan, was the favorite (at least for us) of the final fight at first blush. Despite Natan’s sincere desire the gold medal was snatched  from under his nose. Afraid so, we were so close. The silver medal of World Championships is a great success. The successes which was on our fellow-citizens lips for a long time.

But let’s go back to the rivalry of the rest of juniors. Although for two days of the rivalry they did not manage to win any medals they deserve the applause for sure. Their final results were impressive. I think that the word ‘impressive’ is not an exaggeration. The result just behind the podium in the general qualification is a great result as the sports level was very high and the competition was huge. Let’s look closer to the best results of our juniors. Natalia Kwiatkowska from Koszalin in the up to 55kg category of the left hand was on a good 6^th place. Equally well did Nikola Ipnar from Jaworzno in up to 60kg category in the left hand where she finished her start on 5^th place. Przemysław Zegota from Tomaszów Mazowiecki almost got the brown medal in up to 65kg left hand but finally he was 4^th.  The same was in case of out heaviest junior - Wojciecha Pietak from Jaworzno in +80 kg left hand who was 4^th (in right hand he was 7^th among 21 starting competitors). These and others good places of our contestants make us being respected in the rivalry with the best world lead. A bit more work at the trainings, good supplementation and more experience will make the amount of the medals of juniors category on the world field increase and be greater than in Italy. This year we showed what we can do both at the European Championships in Bulgaria in June and now at World Championships in Italy in September. We hope our juniors have enough desire, strength and as in all not Olympic sport the financial background.