Łukasz Kuczyński before the European Short Track Championships: At 500 meters I feel like a fish in water!

Posted On: January 12, 2023

Grzegorz Michalewski: After a break of seven years, you will return to the European Championship. In 2016, in Sochi, you were ranked eighth in the relay competition. How do you remember those competitions?

Lucasz Kuczynski: I was 16 at the time and together with Rafał Anikiej we went to this competition as juniors. I had never had the opportunity to compete in the World Cup before, so this debut was for me a chance to break through and the opportunity to compete with top players in the world. It was a great experience for me and there was a bit of stress, but for a start at such a young age, it wasn’t too bad.

Then you returned to training after a serious injury. What was the injury?

I broke my ankle and this injury took me several months to recover and get back into shape. Unfortunately, when I participated in the national ranking competition, and later in the Polish Cup, the same injury happened to me again. There were even suspicions that they were caused by a fault in my equipment. Again, another rehabilitation and a long return to training awaited me, but luckily since then everything has been fine with my health.

This season you have mainly competed in the 500 meter sprint distance in the individual competition. Your best World Cup result was in Kazakhstan, where you were eleventh, twelfth and fifteenth respectively. These results bode well for the European Championships.

I was very excited about this season and worked hard to prepare. I knew it had to bring results and it turned out to be true – I started making the quarter-finals on a regular basis. Previously, I secured that promotion to the quarter-finals at the start of the season at the World Cup competition in Salt Lake City. The first step was the most important, because it gives you more confidence and convinces you that maintaining a high level is much easier than getting there. Now, not only me, but our whole group knows that we are capable of fighting and with each subsequent practice and competition, we move forward.

Diane Sellier and Neithan Thomas have joined our team. Sellier in Almaty won the 500 meters competition in Almaty, winning a historic medal for the Polish short track in the men’s world cup.

We were all very happy because we are in a group where we train and compete together. Diane was happy after this success and so were we, because we work together and her result gave us even more motivation to train. We have all worked hard for many years and what we are doing now is starting to pay off. This success of Diane Sellier is only the tip of the iceberg, very difficult to reach and not visible from the top of the water. Now we know it is and exists and only hard work can get it. We all needed his success.

Not only the results achieved by Sellier this season, but the progression is also seen in the results obtained by all our players on the men’s team. You can see the effects of the work you have done during the trainings led by Urszula Kamińska and Gregory Durand.

We are training with coach Urszula and coach Gregory for the fifth year. The level of short track is really high and it is still evolving. It took us four or five years to reach this high level and we are improving all the time to ride better and faster. We know there is still a lot of work ahead of us, but we want to grow and move up the ladder.

Your hard work in training is already paying off in the results achieved in the mixed and men’s relay. The mixed relay team won a historic medal at the World Cup in Almaty and the men’s relay team from Kazakhstan finished sixth.

We won the competition with Belgium in the B final, so this result is even more satisfying. We are trying to increase the strength and quality of this team. A relay race must have, above all, four competitors riding at an even level, and only then can you work step by step to improve technique as well as better and faster driving. It is a very tough competition and many different factors must contribute to achieve good results. I am happy that we are progressing in each relay event and the medal won in the “mixed” is the best confirmation of this.

What goals are you setting before the European Championships in Gdańsk, both in individual competition and in the relay?

I feel like a fish in water from a distance of 500 meters. Anyway, it looks like 1000 meters, because sprint skills are also decisive here. I am not a specialist in the 1500 meters, but I am convinced that I could give something of myself and cover this distance well. As for the competition in the two relay competitions, everything will happen during the start in Gdańsk. We are very well prepared for this competition and I can assure you that we will do our best.

Broadcasts of the competition in Gdańsk from Friday 13 January live on Polsat Sport Extra and Polsat Sport News.

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