Aleksandra Jez

Happy birthday to Poland’s sprinter Aleksandra Jeż, the reigning Polish U20 200m champion and one of the busiest medal collectors in European age-group sprinting.

Aleksandra won the Polish U20 200m title in Zamość this July in 24.03, a personal best, and added silver over 100m at the same championships. Her international record was already well stocked before that. She has European U20 4x100m bronze from Tampere, and before that a European U18 silver in the Swedish relay in Banská Bystrica, where the Polish quartet ran 2:05.54 and took nearly three seconds off the national record. She also owns the Polish U18 indoor 200m record, 24.51, set in Wrocław.

She has been with the same coach, Sebastian Papuga, since childhood, running out of AZS AWF Gorzów, and has more recently been working with national team coaches Andrzej Giza and Mateusz Diak as well. She sat her matura this year at the sports championship school in Gorzów and plans to study physical education. Her region named her its Young Athlete of the Year.

Her own description of the job is better than anything a reporter would come up with: a sprinter runs for barely a dozen seconds, she said, but she prepares for it her whole life. She has been at it a while already, having started as a dancer at three, years before she ever found a track. And the Instagram handle is a joke worth explaining, because jeż is Polish for hedgehog, and szybki jeżyk reads as the fast little hedgehog.

Wszystkiego najlepszego, Ola! Sto lat, dużo zdrowia i jeszcze wiele rekordów przed Tobą! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇵🇱