Fate ordered him to be born in Poland just before World War II and gave him a not simple sexuality. [FRAGMENT]

Wojciech Fusek and Jerzy Porębski are a duo known to lovers of mountain literature, responsible for such publications as “Doctors in the Mountains”, “Polish Himalayas” and “GOPR. For every call”. “Kurczab. Szpej, spada i secretes. The extraordinary life of Janusz Kurczab” was published on October 11, 2023 by Agora Publishing House.

Fragment:

In July 1959, Kurczab set off for his first world championship. They took place in the capital of Hungary, which was pacified after the anti-Soviet uprising of 1956.

In January, the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic suspended the ban on foreign trips, and in June they completely lifted it. The saber players returned with the team gold (Emil Ochyra, Jerzy Pawłowski, Andrzej Piątkowski, Włodzimierz Wójcicki, Wojciech Zabłocki, Ryszard Zub) and individual bronze for Pawłowski. The epee players did not bring home a medal, but “experience gained, important for the future.” Kurczab also used this trite formula in an interview. However, he was very disappointed.

1/4 finals of the Individual World Championships in Budapest in 1959. Janusz Kurczab loses to the Yugoslav after a fierce duel Janusz Kurczab’s archive / promotional materials of Agora Publishing House

To make up for his failure on the board, he set out for the Tatra Mountains in August. After completing the four-way Sokołowski route on Żabi Niżni on August 6 as a warm-up, from August 12 to 27, 1959, he completed 11 routes with a difficulty scale ranging from V to VI–. Among other things, he made the third-ever ascent of the northern wall of Mały Młynarz and the Puškáš route on the southern wall of Mięguszowiecki Szczyt. He conquered both of them together with Piotr Misiurewicz, forgotten today, but an outstanding mountain climber in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1993, he almost lost his life in an avalanche on Sławkowski Szczyt and spent the next 18 years in a wheelchair.

These dozen or so runs with outstanding colleagues were no longer practice, but achievements that can be included in club anniversary lists without shame.

In the winter and spring of 1960, Janusz concentrated on fencing, hiding his Tatra equipment deep inside for almost a year. He was no longer a supplement, but a support for the club and national epee team, which was preparing for the games planned for the turn of August and September. The event organized in Rome grew into a global event, not only a sports one.

Janusz Kurczab in the mountains Janusz Kurczab’s archive / promotional materials of Agora Publishing House

Four years earlier, many countries did not send representatives to Melbourne. The reasons for the boycott were political. Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland protested against the participation of the Soviet Union, which brutally suppressed the uprising in Hungary. Egypt, Iraq and Libya were against the participation of Israeli athletes, and China did not agree to the participation of athletes from Taiwan, a “rebellious province”, under a different flag. Other countries, due to the distance and date of the competition (it started on November 22), severely limited the size of their teams. A total of 72 teams and 3,314 athletes took part. Against this background, Rome looked impressive: 83 countries and a total of 5,338 women and men taking part.

During the opening parade, Poles were one of the largest teams. They appeared in light teal gabardine dresses and jackets, white non-iron shirts, narrow dark beige ties and gray crease trousers, as well as light leather slippers with a thin sole.

Three weeks before the departure, such an outfit was also hung in the wardrobe on Podskarbińska Street, because then Janusz and his fellow fencers officially received their Olympic vocation. Every day, my mother proudly brushed the dust off her jacket and straightened her tie. She was happy. She even bought a new radio to listen to the broadcast.

The epee players stormed through the qualifying rounds, Kurczab fenced brilliantly, but in the fight for the quarterfinals, the Poles defeated Luxembourg. After 16 fights there was an absolute draw – 8:8 in fights and 61:61 in points. The promotion was decided by an additional fight with Hans Gutenhauf. Coach Fokt selected Witold Glos instead of Bohdan Gonsior or Kurczab, who fought more effectively in the tournament. Losing 2:5 deprived the Poles of a chance to win a medal.

Many months later, fragments of this failure were shown in the Polish Film Chronicle, shown in cinemas immediately before the films. They caused such a groan of disappointment as if it were a direct transmission.

Individually, Janusz also performed worse than expected. He finished in 13th place, after losing the play-offs to the Russian Khabarov 1:5 and the British Jay 0:5.

– With Jay, you could only lose or win to zero – my friends laughed. He wasn’t laughing. He postponed climbing for a few months to make the Olympics and resigned from the camp in Slovakia. He did not resume his studies, although he planned to do so. Somewhere deep inside he was convinced that he was going for a medal. He was wrong. He was in a terrible mood, he didn’t even go to visit the Eternal City, he stayed in his room until he returned, which he later regretted very much.

– These were the last amateur games. We lived in student dormitories, there was no omnipresent surveillance, no police checks, no forbidden zones, recalled Bohdan Gonsior, a four-time epee Olympian, after his return.

Whenever they had time, the players went to see their compatriots perform. The boxing final between Zbigniew Pietrzykowski and Cassius Clay was watched by most of the team. After two rounds, the Poles were convinced that they had the gold medalist. The American, probably the most famous boxer in history, began his extraordinary career by defeating the man from Bielsko in Rome. It was he who introduced marketing, self-promotion and psychological warfare before entering the ring into the world of sports. A few years after the Rome final, he changed his name to Muhammed Ali.

*

During the games in Rome, television took an important place in the sports world. Direct reports from the competition were introduced. The radio began to fade into the background. Players began to become as popular as actors and writers. Some of them had monuments erected during their lifetime, such as the barefoot marathon winner, Ethiopian Abebe Bikili, who was the fastest on the ancient stone tracks.

In Poland, it has become fashionable to cast boxers and fencers in episodic film roles. Leszek Drogosz played for Andrzej Wajda, twice. He also appeared with 12 other directors. After the end of their careers, the Olympic gold medalists from later years, Jerzy Kulej and Jan Szczepański, played the main roles in the crime comedy “Excuse me, are they beating here?”

Fencers and boxers, bringing armfuls of medals from the world championships and Olympic games, added some color to Gomułka’s gray era. They represented distant worlds. Those from the ring – good herbs, sometimes fighters like Marian Kasprzyk, sometimes masters of fist fencing, like the “wizard of the ring” Drogosz, a master of dodges. On the other hand – always in white, with their faces hidden behind a fine lattice mask, representatives of elegant fencing. Graduates of the faculties of law, medicine, architecture, Academy of Fine Arts, students of the University of Technology.

Initially, the coach of the Polish national saber team in 1947–1958, János Kevey, a fanatical fencing master, opposed his students’ studies. “Leave your damn career alone,” he shouted at Wojciech Zabłocki when he announced that he was starting studies at the Faculty of Architecture. Over time, the Hungarian changed his mind, seeing that studies were a break from monotonous training. Subsequent coaches continued this trend. That is why the roles of celebrities in the world of the Polish elite of the 1950s and 1960s were played by Kevey’s prodigies. This is what they said about the players who learned sports fencing under the guidance of the Hungarian, although Kurczab’s coach Zygmunt Fokt was also surrounded by legend.

A soldier of the Home Army, colonel of the Polish People’s Army, coach of CWKS Legia and the national team, after the war he worked as a fencing teacher at the Higher Theater School in Łódź, later moved to Warsaw – at the instigation of Aleksander Zelwerowicz, he prepared fencing routines with students. According to the outstanding actor, these exercises were not only useful in stage and film imitations of duels, but also greatly helped the actors move around the stage.

Thanks to Fokt, the saber player Andrzej Piątkowski was included in the film. He developed, among other things, the fencing routines for the film “Pan Wołodyjowski” and played in the saber fight scenes. It happened that, at Fokta’s request, Kurczab went to Łódź and served as a sparring partner for the actors at the State Film School at Targowa Street. A few zlotys came in. He also met young artists and sometimes stayed in Łódź to party.

Together with their tutor Janusz Różycki, they entered the world of young artists who aspired to bohemia. In the life story of Kurczab, Zelwerowicz played one more episodic role. It was he who came up with the name for Dyzma and was his godfather.

Chicken. Sword, sword and secrets promotional materials of Agora Publishing House