Bydgoszcz 2026 Junior Championships: results after two days
- Published
- 2026-08-02T09:31:57+00:00
Full competition results: 32nd Polish Youth Olympics (Summer Sports) — Polish Championships
Two evenings of racing in Bydgoszcz produced 95 medals — and one loud message from 130 kilometres west. Three clubs from Gorzów Wielkopolski walked away with eight of the 32 titles decided so far at the 32nd Polish Youth Olympics and Polish Junior Championships, a combined meet that has completed two of its three racing days and 32 of its 45 A finals on the country's oldest regatta course.
Overview
The Bydgoszcz regatta brought 428 athletes from 59 clubs to Brdyujście. Twenty-seven clubs have medalled. Here is the top eight. Standings after the finals of 31 July and 1 August — 13 events are still to be decided on 2 August.
| Club | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| KS GPower Gorzów | 5 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| CWZS Zawisza Bydgoszcz | 3 | 5 | 7 | 15 |
| KS Posnania Poznań | 3 | 1 | 1 | 5 |
| UKS Silvant Kajak Elbląg | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| WTS Astoria Bydgoszcz | 2 | 5 | 1 | 8 |
| UMKS Zryw Wolsztyn | 2 | 1 | 3 | 6 |
| KST Włókniarz Chełmża | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| UKS Victoria Wałcz | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
Read the table by gold and KS GPower Gorzów wins it outright: five titles, nothing else. Read it by volume and CWZS Zawisza Bydgoszcz wins with fifteen medals — but only three of them gold. Same regatta, two entirely different conclusions.
The regional standings, which are what the Youth Olympics is formally scored on, put the host region first: Kuyavian-Pomeranian leads with 31 medals (9 gold, 12 silver, 10 bronze) ahead of Greater Poland (22, seven gold) and Lubusz (14, eight gold). Lubusz collected seventeen fewer medals than the hosts and finished one title behind them. Practically all of it came from three addresses in Gorzów: KS GPower, KS AZS-AWF and KS Admira.
Star athlete: Mateusz Augustyniak
The strongest individual haul belongs to Mateusz Augustyniak of KS AZS-AWF Gorzów. The 2008-born canoeist won C1 500 m in 1:56.67, holding off Jakub Kawka of KSC Olsztyn by 0.48 s, then doubled up over 1000 m the following evening in 4:21.96, this time 0.69 s clear of Michał Lipiński of KS AZS-AWF Poznań. He added bronze in the mixed C2 500 m alongside Wanessa Kołb.
None of it is a fluke. In July 2025 in Montemor-o-Velho, Augustyniak became junior world champion in C4 500 m, the Polish crew clocking 1:39.97 with Mateusz Gehrke, Kacper Stanek and Oskar Dekowski on board. This season the same quartet took bronze at the Junior and U23 World Championships in Halifax in 1:43.07, and five days before racing in Bydgoszcz, Augustyniak and Dekowski brought home C2 1000 m silver from the Junior and U23 European Championships in Szeged in 3:46.852.
Two domestic titles, a continental silver from last week and a world bronze from last month form a single rising line. The fourth name from that world-title crew, Kacper Stanek of KS Warta Poznań, finished seventh in both canoe finals here — 2:01.38 and 4:35.75. A year after sharing a world title, two boat-mates are five places apart.
Dekowski raced at home for WTS Astoria Bydgoszcz and left with three medals: gold in C2 500 m with Radosław Rowinias (1:51.88, just 0.34 s ahead of Eryk Baczyński and Krzysztof Stępień of Zawisza), silver in the mixed C2 with Natasza Szymańska, and bronze in C1 1000 m.
Elbląg, Gorzów and a four-hundredths finish
The other headline performer is Julia Piasecka of UKS Silvant Kajak Elbląg. She won K1 500 m in 1:56.26 and K1 1000 m in 4:18.38, beating Oliwia Borucka of KKW 1929 Kraków both times — by 1.67 s and 1.48 s respectively. The same duel, settled the same way, twice across these two days.
Piasecka arrived off a season in which she was fourth over 1000 m and fifth over 500 m at the Halifax worlds, and took K1 1000 m silver at the 89th Polish Senior Championships in 4:07.93 — more than ten seconds quicker than her winning junior time here. Elbląg's third gold came from the K4 of Bogumił Daczkowski, Kacper Dębowski, Arkadiusz Wieteska and Rafał Stańczewski, who opened the entire finals block by winning the younger-junior K4 500 m in 1:32.89, 2.58 s clear.
The best race so far was the junior K2 500 m. Maciej Bargiel and Bartosz Kulpa of KS GPower Gorzów were only fourth in their heat (1:38.26) and had to go through the semifinal. They won it, dropped to 1:33.70 in the final, and beat Mikołaj Kaźmierczak and Mateusz Majza of UMKS Zryw Wolsztyn by four hundredths of a second — the narrowest margin of the two days.
Kulpa left with two titles, adding K2 1000 m alongside Paweł Szott in 3:31.46. Szott had won K1 500 m the previous evening in 1:43.29. The remaining two GPower golds went to Natalia Przybyła and Julia Kamieniecka in the younger-junior K2 500 m — 0.14 s ahead of a Zawisza crew — with Kamieniecka also taking the K1 500 m in her age group.
At the other end of the scale, Antoni Maćkowiak and Artem Vasylchenko of WTS Astoria Bydgoszcz won the younger-junior C2 1000 m in 4:09.20 with 15.81 s to spare. Among singles, the biggest gap belonged to Magdalena Turowska of Dojlidy Białystok Canoe & Kajak Team, 6.32 s clear in the C1 500 m in 2:20.92.
The hosts: plenty of medals, few titles
Bydgoszcz's three clubs — CWZS Zawisza, WTS Astoria and UKS Kopernik — have taken 27 of the 95 medals awarded, more than a quarter of the pool. They have seven of the 32 titles, one fewer than the three Gorzów clubs on their own.
Zawisza illustrates the pattern best. The club entered 47 athletes, by far the largest squad, and won fifteen medals — 0.32 medals per athlete. UMKS Zryw Wolsztyn came with nine names and leaves with six medals (0.67), while UKS Victoria Wałcz turned six athletes into four medals, two of them gold: Aleksander Korczak and Adam Wankiewicz in K2 500 m, and Fortunat Łakomy in K1 1000 m.
Zawisza's titles all came from women's kayak: the K4 of Zofia Maczkowska, Aleksandra Zamachowska, Maja Ściesińska and Wiktoria Radtke over 500 m (1:47.69), Ściesińska again in the K2 with Anastazja Michalska (1:54.26), and Anna Vdovychenko with Anna Synówka in the younger-junior C2 500 m, 0.32 s ahead of UPKS Poncio 2010 Lidzbark.
The hosts' answer in men's kayak came from UKS Kopernik Bydgoszcz and Hubert Florczak, who won the younger-junior K1 500 m in 1:48.91 — 0.75 s ahead of Alan Szymański — and returned the next day to take K2 1000 m with Krystian Kolczyński in 3:44.16.
The class of 2011 arrives early
Eleven of the 32 titles went to athletes born in 2011 — fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds racing in the younger-junior category. Aleksander Korczak, born in August 2011, won the K2 500 m and added 1000 m silver. Stanisław Błajet of KS Posnania Poznań, born that December, won C2 500 m with Kacper Ratajczak by 0.69 s. The winning KST Włókniarz Chełmża K4 — Zofia Cybal, Julia Makuracka, Antonina Badziąg and Paulina Kuciak — was an all-2011 crew.
The spread of gold by birth year is remarkably flat: 19 titles for 2008, 15 for 2010, 14 for 2009, 11 for 2011. In an age group where twelve months usually decide everything, the younger half of the field did not yield.
A separate line belongs to Wojciech Miśkiewicz of KS Posnania Poznań, the only canoeist with a younger-junior double — 2:02.16 over 500 m and 4:26.12 over 1000 m, neither of them close.
What's next
The regatta closes today, 2 August, with the junior 200 m sprints and a full block of long-distance racing over 3000 m and 5000 m — the biggest fields of the week, with 40 boats entered in the younger-junior K1 5000 m and 35 in the junior equivalent. Live timing runs on the event's live page.
The calendar leaves no room to breathe. On 6 August Poznań hosts the 41st Polish U23 Championships and 25th Polish Youth Championships, where the older juniors from Bydgoszcz meet the U23 ranks. Late August brings the ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships to the same Poznań water, and in September the best of this field travel to Bratislava for the Olympic Hopes Regatta, the traditional first international test for the younger-junior age group.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who won the most medals in Bydgoszcz?
Three athletes have three each after two days of finals: Mateusz Augustyniak (two gold, one bronze), Oskar Dekowski (gold, silver, bronze) and Szymon Witkowski of MKS Czechowice-Dziedzice (K4 500 m gold, K1 1000 m silver, K2 500 m bronze).
Which club has won the most medals after two days?
CWZS Zawisza Bydgoszcz with fifteen — three gold, five silver, seven bronze. The most titles, though, belong to KS GPower Gorzów with five.
What was the fastest 500 m time in the finals of 31 July and 1 August?
1:26.87, by the MKS Czechowice-Dziedzice junior K4 of Wojciech Domański, Natan Kociołek, Szymon Witkowski and Bartosz Witoszek — six seconds quicker than the winning younger-junior K4 over the same distance.
Which of the finals so far was the closest?
The junior K2 500 m: four hundredths of a second between Maciej Bargiel and Bartosz Kulpa and the UMKS Zryw Wolsztyn crew. Three other finals were decided by under half a second.
Is Gorzów now the capital of Polish junior canoe sprint?
The numbers say yes. GPower, AZS-AWF and Admira took eight of the 32 titles — one in four — from a combined fourteen medals. Bydgoszcz's three clubs needed 27 medals to produce seven golds. Gorzów wins on accuracy, not volume.
Did the hosts underperform at home?
Not on the medal count: Kuyavian-Pomeranian leads every region with 31. The conversion is the problem. Nine gold against twelve silver and ten bronze means the hosts kept reaching the podium and kept losing the last hundred metres. Zawisza alone turned fifteen medals into three titles.
Is UMKS Zryw Wolsztyn the most efficient club here?
Wolsztyn has six medals from nine entered athletes — 0.67 per head, double CWZS Zawisza Bydgoszcz (0.32) and more than five times KS AZS-AWF Poznań, who fielded 32 athletes for four medals and no gold. UKS Victoria Wałcz matches the ratio and beats it on titles.
Is the class of 2011 the future of Polish canoe sprint?
Eleven titles for fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds is a third of everything decided across the two days, including wins in crew boats where experience normally counts double. These athletes will be 17 in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic year and 21 by Brisbane 2032 — the age of today's U23 front runners.
Bydgoszcz stops handing out medals today, but the most interesting thread rides out of town: Mateusz Augustyniak, two national titles heavier, with a European silver and a world bronze already in the bag, heads straight for the 41st Polish U23 Championships in Poznań and a first domestic look at the U23 ranks. Three weeks later the same water hosts the senior world championships — which is exactly the frame in which the names from these Bydgoszcz finals are worth remembering.
The rest of the championships is covered separately: our report on the closing day — the 200 m and 5000 m finals and the Bydgoszcz 2026 summary with the full medal table of both championships.