Explaining Kozakiewicz's Gesture: Poland's Most Scandalous Arm
An international argument between Poland and the USSR nearly erupted due to an unusual triumphant gesture from the pole vault champion at the 1980 Olympics. Władysław Kozakiewicz's beaming face and rude hand signals went on to become a powerful image in Polish culture, and even a part of the country's consciousness. But what was the real story behind Polish sport’s most famous arm?
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Coup de tete by Adel Abdessemed is displayed during Adel Abdessemed exhibition premier at the Centre Pompidou, 2012, photo: Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Images
Sometimes an event in an athlete’s career is so significant that it becomes way more than just a part of the sports world. Take, for instance, Zinedine Zidane’s infamous head-butt. When France was facing Italy in the 2006 World Cup final in Germany, the virtuoso player, provoked by Marco Materazzi, delivered a headline-grabbing hit to the Italian’s torso, rightfully earning a red card. Many argue that sending off Zidane, a key player, made the French lose the cup.
Despite the loss, the French sympathised with Zidane: Materazzi only got what he deserved for his highly unpleasant remarks and didn’t really suffer much since he was fine to finish the game – Zidane’s outburst clearly wasn’t that destructive. Plus it became part of the French, Italian and worldwide discourse. The incident was even commemorated six years later in 2012 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. A bronze statue titled Headbutt was unveiled showing the exact moment of the blow – a manifestation of support for Zidane.
Thus a sports event became a thing of culture, ethics and much, much more…
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Road works, photo: Przemek Ziemacki/East News
In 1980, much like this year, Russia (or the Soviet Union to be exact) was hosting a major international sports event – the Summer Olympics. Overshadowed by the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, the event was boycotted by many countries, including the US and Canada. But that’s not what the 1980 Olympics are chiefly remembered for in Poland, which participated as a member of the Eastern Bloc (after World War II, Poland ended up in the Soviet sphere of influence and had a communist regime imposed on it).
To the average Pole, the 1980 Summer Olympics are chiefly linked to the memory of the pole vault competition and the spectacular victory of Władysław Kozakiewicz. The athlete established a new World Record of 5.78 metres. But apart from achieving an absolutely stunning result, the Pole did something else which proved equally (or perhaps even more) memorable.
Frustrated by the unfriendly disposition of the crowd at the stadium who whistled at him to discourage him while he was jumping, the Pole showed the audience a specific gesture after he had won. Some might call it ‘the Italian salute’ or ‘the arm’, but in Poland, it’s referred to as the wał, namely ‘the shaft’.
Pronounced ‘vow’, here’s a further clarification from the venerable PWN Encyclopaedia about the word wał:
Text
A tool in the shape of a thick cylinder (…) used to press and smoothen the ground, road surfaces, etc.
Informally: of somebody stupid or naïve.
In fact, wał, just like its English equivalent 'shaft', is also sometimes used to refer to a man's penis. But for the purposes of this article, we propose you imagine the more polite meaning...
Surrounded by thousands of haters
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Polish pole vaulter Wladyslaw Kozakiewicz makes a gesture to the crowd after setting a new world record in the Olympic pole vault final 30 July 1980 in Moscow and winning the gold medal, photo: AFP/East News
Why did Kozakiewicz give the crowd the offensive ‘shaft’? Let’s hear it from the champ himself:
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The Russian crowd was whistling (…) at any non-Russian contestant. (…) They were whistling to distract us, you can only imagine the noise, 70,000 people at the Luzhniki Stadium, probably only 10,000 of them were tourists.
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(…) It occurred to me that I’m the only person in the world who got whistled at for breaking the world record. (…) So when I landed, I showed them this Polish shaft, the nicest one you can imagine. I expressed my anger at the whistling Soviet audience – nobody whistles in athletics. If you take a look at TV broadcasts, you find that people either clap rhythmically when they feel like it or simply sit quietly.
Author
Excerpt from a 2018 interview for Culture.pl
Moreover, many of the Olympic competitions were rigged: according to Kozakiewicz the referees worked in favour of the Soviets, such as their discus and javelin throwers. That plus the unpleasantness of the audience added up to a rather toxic atmosphere. But defeating obstacles lied in Kozakiewicz’s nature:
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Some trait of my character urged me to throw all the negative things out of my head, not to focus on them, and to keep on pushing forward.
Author
From the 2013 book Nie Mówcie Mi Jak Mam Żyć (Don’t Tell Me How To Live) by Michał Pol
Also, according to the Polish Olympic Committee’s website, Kozakiewicz was often a ‘difficult’ and ‘insubordinate’ athlete. This mix of traits gave the world a champion, a record and… a timeless gesture.
Kozakiewicz’s ‘shaft’, broadcast by TV networks the world over, became an overnight sensation. Like Zidane’s head-butt, it became more than just a sports episode. It became a symbol of defiance, winning against unfair odds, attitude. But unlike Zidane’s behaviour, Kozakiewicz’s gesture wasn’t in any way physically violent nor did it hinder the results.
So good, he went back for seconds
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The Poznań University of Physical Education where Władysław Kozakiewicz learned how to pole vault, photo: Jedrzej Nowicki/AG
Sometimes, because of all the talk about the famous gesture, people forget about the pure sportsmanship that lies at the core of this story. Kozakiewicz was a remarkable pole vaulter. One could maybe even compare him to Zidane as both had periods of excellence when they won almost everything in their respective fields (for the Pole, those were the 1970s). Kozakiewicz’s talent was so great that in 1973, by the age of nineteen, he had become Champion of Poland and established a new domestic record.
In Moscow, he actually won the same competition twice. First, he bested all his rivals including the at-the-time world record holder, France’s Thierry Vigneron (his record was 5.77m) and the Soviet Union’s Konstantin Volkov, by jumping 5.75 metres high. By then, the Pole had already secured gold. But according to the rules, the competition was still on. Since he had already out-jumped all his opponents, he had only himself to compete with. He decided to raise the bar higher and… broke the world record.
The athlete remembers that he actually showed the ‘shaft’ twice that day. The first time when he secured the win. The second when he boosted his result.
From a sports standpoint, Moscow was Kozakiewicz’s biggest achievement. The official statistics of the Polish Olympic Committee don’t mention him ever jumping higher. But the gesture and also the win itself were, well… problematic.
A deeply philosophical symbol of rebellion
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Władysław Kozakiewicz at home with his wife Anna and daughter Katarzyna, photo: Leszek Fidusiewicz/Reporter
The world quickly forgot about Kozakiewicz’s gesture – there’s always a new overnight sensation. But to the Soviet Union it became an issue, one they simply couldn’t let go.
One has to remember that at the time Poland was still under the communist regime (which lasted until 1989) and as such it was a satellite of the USSR. Big Brother was neither pleased with being defeated in his own backyard nor with witnessing Kozakiewicz’s ‘shaft’. Symptomatic of the dynamic is what Trybuna Ludu, the main state newspaper of Poland and voice-piece of the regime, wrote about the Polish athlete in an attempt to appease the Soviets:
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[He] was so happy that he almost touched the ground as he bowed toward the stands.
Przegląd Sportowy, the sports newspaper, also omitted the gesture in its relation:
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It’s been quite a while since we’ve enjoyed such an atmosphere. Throughout the competition the Polish supporters cheered on their athletes but they really went out of their way after the third attempt at the breathtaking height of 5.82 [sic] – they chanted for an entire hour – until the Polish national anthem was played.
But propaganda wasn’t going to settle the question. The Soviets wanted to take Kozakiewicz’s medal away from him, arguing that he had ‘insulted the Soviet nation’. The USSR ambassador in Warsaw appealed to the Polish authorities to get it done. A special committee even assembled in Moscow, aiming to disqualify the Pole.
Kozakiewicz himself says that his gesture wasn’t in any way addressed to the ‘Soviet nation’ but specifically to those who whistled at him at the stadium:
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Truth be told, both those gestures were spontaneous reactions to the whistles and hostility in the stands. And to the swindles of the referees who were favouring the host country’s athletes (…). It was sort of like saying: ‘You can whistle all you want, I’m still the best!’
Author
From the 2013 book Nie Mówcie Mi Jak Mam Żyć (Don’t Tell Me How To Live) by Michał Pol
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Edward Kozakiewicz, Władysław’s older brother who encoureged the prospective champ to take up pole vaulting, 1974, photo: Leszek Fidusiewicz/REPORTER
Nevertheless, in the same book, he also gives a frank explanation as to why the Soviets reacted like they did:
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I don’t think anybody in the stadium noticed anything, there was no reaction really. But TV… that was a whole different thing. There the whole world saw that ‘a Pole gave the Russians the shaft, in Moscow’.
The sportsman goes on to reminisce about the reactions back home. A great many Poles opposed the Polish communist regime, installed and backed by the Soviets, and saw Kozakiewicz’s gesture as a symbol of rebellion:
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I couldn’t walk down the street without somebody coming up to me to give me a handshake or a hug. In a flash, my gesture became deeply philosophical. Nobody wanted to believe that all I was really concerned with was that crowd in the stands. When I explained that, people would wink as if to say: ‘Right, right, you have to say that but we know how it really was.’
So, quite unintentionally, Kozakiewicz’s gesture became a ‘deeply philosophical symbol of rebellion’ causing commotion on an international level…
Fortunately, the future chief of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch, wasn’t in any mood to deprive Kozakiewicz of what he’d rightfully won. He told Kozakiewicz later that he ended up telling the committee the same story the Polish team had given without having consulted them. Samaranch, knowing the athlete and wanting to help him, said he ‘always makes such a gesture when he wins, especially when he beats the world record’. With these two similar stories, the committee dropped the charges.
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People welcoming a returning ship in the port of Gdynia, 1956, photo: Władysław Sławny/Forum
Understandably, the communist authorities weren’t entirely comfortable with having a celebrity sportsman in the country who just happened to be a powerful symbol of opposition. On many occasions, life was purposefully made harder for Kozakiewicz:
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In Poland they kept disqualifying me for that gesture. The government was a communist one. They couldn’t officially disqualify me for the ‘shaft’ so they made up completely false accusations.
Once they claimed they were disqualifying him for wearing the wrong kind of sportswear.
Text
Once they claimed they were disqualifying him for wearing the wrong kind of sportswear.
Author
Excerpts from a 2018 interview for Culture.pl
Fed up with how the communists harassed him, Kozakiewicz left the country in 1985. He moved to West Germany and settled down near Hannover, where he joined a local sports club. Eventually he even became a West German citizen and established the country’s pole vaulting record of 5.70m. Now retired, he still lives in Germany together with his wife Anna, who also used to a professional athlete.
Interestingly Kozakiewicz wasn’t born in Poland. He’s from the village of Soleczniki Małe in today’s Lithuania. The year of his birth (1953) the village was, however, still part of the Soviet Union. The Soviets took it during World War II, although it earlier lied within the borders of Poland. A bit complicated, but it does let one understand how Kozakiewicz’s Polish family (like many others) found itself on foreign soil without even relocating. They were only repatriated to Poland in 1957 and moved to the city of Gdynia.
After the fall of communism in 1989, Kozakiewicz began visiting his home country again where nowadays he spends quite a lot of time. The champ tells Culture.pl that people still recognise him on the streets…
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Autobus or Bus, an oil painting by Bronisław Wojciech Linke, one of the depicted figures is showing the shaft, 1959-1961, photo: National Museum in Warsaw
Even though all this time has passed since the Moscow Summer Olympics, Kozakiewicz’s gesture is still very much alive. Not in the sense that you see people making it spontaneously, but rather it’s a figure of speech. Now and then, somebody says they made the gesture, simply meaning that they expressed their discontent in a frank manner. And it’s not just people who remember the 1980 Olympics who use this phrase, but also those born well after the competition was over.
Amazingly, despite the gesture’s deep impact and liveliness, there doesn’t seem to be a noted Polish artwork commemorating it. No oil painting, no bronze statue showing that memorable moment when Kozakiewicz crossed his arms in Moscow. Seems high time to come up with one…
Author: Marek Kępa, June 2018
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