It’s fair to say the Tour de Pologne has been a significant race in the course of Michal Kwiatkowski’s young but already highly successful career. It was where the Pole’s trajectory towards his current status as world champion was first set, and where he would later make a first real impact on the professional stage.
As a young boy Kwiatkowski turned out at the Mini Tour de Pologne, a side event for children, and it was at that point that he knew he wanted to become a bike racer.
“As a child the Tour de Pologne came to my hometown and I participated in the race at the Mini Tour de Pologne,” Kwiatkowski told media ahead of the 72nd edition of the race. “It was amazing, it was so nice to see all the people around to see the stars of cycling in Poland. That was my first experience of the Tour de Pologne and that’s when I decided to become a rider."
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As well as setting him off along the route to a career in professional cycling, the Tour de Pologne was also the stage on which Kwiatkowski announced himself for the first real time as one of the brightest prospects in the sport. In 2012, at the age of 22 and in his first year with Etixx-QuickStep (then Omega Pharma-QuickStep), he took three top-five stage finishes on his way to second overall. He already had a first pro win in a prologue at the Driedaagse van West-Vlaanderen earlier in the year but this was a statement of intent at WorldTour level.
“This race has always been the race that launched the talents,” Kwiatkowski acknowledged. “It’s the race where a lot of riders show up and become very important riders. It happened to me when I was second, it happened to [Moreno] Moser in the same year, it happened to Marcel Kittel [in 2011], so it’s a perfect race for young riders to build up and start becoming important riders on the international stage.”
Given his history with the race, the 25-year-old is delighted to be back and couldn’t be prouder to be able to show off his world champion’s jersey on home soil.
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