Scoring points with the home crowd
Sports fans in Poland have had plenty of reasons to celebrate in the last few months. Adam Małysz's recent "rebirth" earned him a World Championship title and a fourth Crystal Ball for his victory in the World Cup. The national football team won another two games in the 2008 Euro qualifiers and has a good chance of making it to the European Championships for the first time in history.
The new year brought lots of reasons to for Polish sports fans to feel joyous. First off, the popular volleyball team finally lived up to expectations when it finished second in the World Championships in December. Then the handball team stunned even its most die-hard fans by making it to the championship final early this year, though they eventually lost out to the host and rival, Germany. Last week, the swimming team returned from the World Championships in Melbourne with four medals. This result (incidentally, the same as two years before) was nonetheless seen as a slight disappointment, proving that sports fans are starting to expect a lot from their athletes and root for superior performance.
Government officials never fail to take advantage of the opportunity to take pictures with top athletes, to wine and dine the elite in an expression of their support of this or that game. They talk about their devotion to improving athletic infrastructure and securing future success, yet the fact is that, currently, athletes can't really attribute much to recent administrations. In the majority of cases, winning medals didn't start to come into play until after the arrival of foreign coaches (volleyball's Lozano) or Polish coaches educated abroad (handball's Wenta). Otherwise, it has been the combination of "a one in a million talent" (Małysz) and tremendous effort on the part of an athlete together with his or her coach, as is the case with many swimming champions.
While politicians continue to promise football stadiums and ski jumping facilities, seven years after Małysz's rise to stardom, the proposed ski jump in the southern town of Wisła has yet to be built. Discourse on the subject can be whittled down to one fine point: Ultimately, it's easier to appreciate gleaming jewels than to spend time and money polishing them.
