Polish duos in Olympic fever
Bartosz Łosiak, a mainstay in beach volleyball, has already made two appearances on the Olympic stage, in 2016 and 2021, alongside his partner at the time, Piotr Kantor. But since 2022, he has formed a new dynamic duo with Michał Bryl, another major player in the sport. Bryl himself already demonstrated his skills alongside Grzegorz Fijałek in 2021 before deciding to form a team with Łosiak. Given their track record and their impressive eighth place in the world rankings, there is a good chance that they will be competing at their first Olympic Games together this summer. Last year, they not only secured bronze medals at the tournaments in Uberlândia and Luxembourg, but also made an indelible impression in Tlaxcala. There they made history by becoming the first Polish duo to win a medal at the beach volleyball World Championships. With such successes behind them, we can look forward to seeing how they perform on the sport's biggest stage.
Since his separation from Łosiak, Kantor has teamed up with Jakub Zdybek, only starting their training last May. Missing valuable points, they failed to qualify for any Elite16-tournaments, but worked all the harder to compete at seven different Challenge-level tournaments and even qualified for the World Championships as well as the A1 CEV EuroBeachVolley Vienna 2023 — though they are still a long way from Paris.
Gruszczynska and Wachowicz are another Polish duo with dreams of competing at the Olympic Games. After a successful first season together, in which they triumphed at the Polish Championships and won silver medals in Luxembourg and at the Futures in Warsaw, they have earned themselves a respectable place in the world rankings, which they share with the Czech duo Hermannova/Stochlova. Their willingness to perform and their potential make us eager to see whether they can collect enough points to qualify for the Games in Paris.
