Oleksii Koliadych won Poland's first medal at the Canoe Sprint World Championships in Poznan on Friday, taking gold in the men's C1 200 metres.
Koliadych finished the final race at Lake Malta in 40.95 seconds to edge out Artur Guliyev of Uzbekistan by 0.1 seconds.
Andrei Zholabov, a Belarusian athlete competing under a neutral flag, took the bronze medal with a time of 41.15 seconds.
Koliadych, who was born in Kherson in Ukraine, has represented Poland in international canoeing competitions since 2017. His victory on the third day of the tournament marked a return to the top of the non-Olympic sprint discipline, following his previous world titles in 2022 and 2024. The C1 category features athletes kneeling in a solo canoe using a single-bladed paddle. Lake Malta, an artificial lake in the west-central Polish city of Poznan, is a prominent international venue for competitive canoeing and rowing.
Television broadcast controversy
Despite Koliadych securing the host nation's first gold medal of the championships, Polish television viewers were unable to watch the race live. Polsat, one of Poland's largest private television networks, holds the domestic broadcast rights for the event and showed commercial advertisements on its Polsat Sport channels while the final was being contested.
The decision to cut away from the race triggered immediate anger from sports fans and commentators across social media platforms.
The social media page Sportowy Rytm Dnia praised Koliadych for returning to the summit of his discipline after his 2024 title. However, the profile stated that Polsat Sport should be ashamed of broadcasting advertisements while a world championship final was taking place.
Social media backlash
Other commentators expressed similar frustration over the coverage of Poland's opening success in Poznan.
Sports commentator Łukasz Gagaska noted that Koliadych had repeated his world championship victories from 2022 and 2024 in the C1 200 metres. Gagaska pointed out that while male canoeists race over 1,000 metres at the Olympic Games, the only part of the Poznan event that fans missed was the final itself.
Journalist Seweryn Czernek criticized Polsat for prioritizing commercials over Koliadych winning a world title on home water in Poznan. Czernek noted that the network had also failed to broadcast a world record set during the scheduled Diamond League track and field event in Zurich the previous day.
