Bartosz Zmarzlik – Poland’s Finest Speedway Rider

KRZYSZTOF SZUJECKI

Despite his relatively young age, the sporting résumé of Poland’s current leading speedway rider is already remarkable. Bartosz Zmarzlik has recently claimed the individual world championship title for the sixth time in his career.

Zmarzlik was born in April 1995 in Szczecin, but his true hometown is the village of Kinice, less than 100 kilometres away. Motorsport became his passion in early childhood. At the age of seven, he watched his peers riding motorcycles for the first time – an experience that left a lasting impression and quickly turned into an obsession. From then on, he spent most of his free time on the track with his brother, putting other sports and forms of entertainment firmly in the background.

‘I was always playing with motorbikes,’ Zmarzlik recalled. 'I was searching, I wanted to do new things. I loved motorbikes from an early age. I love playing with motorbikes, I like talking to them. You have to know your motorbike, you have to be with it seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day.’ At just ten years old, he won the Polish team championship in mini-speedway.

The years passed, but his passion never faded. In 2010, aged fifteen, he won his first Polish youth team championship title with Stal Gorzów and added a bronze medal in the individual competition. A year later, he made his league debut, and his career began to accelerate rapidly – although few could have predicted what was to come.

In 2012, granted a wild card, Zmarzlik competed in the Polish Grand Prix and sensationally finished third. Never before had a rider so young stood on a Speedway Grand Prix podium. That same year, he also won the European Junior Individual Championship.

Major international successes soon followed, alongside numerous European and World Junior Championship medals, mostly in team events. In 2016, Polish riders claimed their seventh senior team world championship title, winning the World Cup in Manchester. Krzysztof Kasprzak, Bartosz Zmarzlik, Piotr Pawlicki and Patryk Dudek produced a superb finish, scoring 11 points in the final four heats. Poland won with 39 points, ahead of Great Britain (32) and Sweden (30). That season, Zmarzlik finished third in the Grand Prix standings with 128 points – his first year as a full-time participant in the series.

The 2017 season brought further success. Alongside Maciej Janowski and Patryk Dudek, Zmarzlik won team gold at the World Games in Wrocław. In August, he claimed victory at the Swedish Grand Prix and ended the season fifth overall. He improved again in 2018, finishing second in the final Grand Prix classification. Some observers suggested that he struggled mentally at decisive moments, but the rider himself disagreed: ‘It wasn’t a mental issue – it was simply a lack of experience,’ he explained. ‘I was young, already competing at the top level, and expectations grew quickly. I didn’t lack confidence; I lacked cunning and race savvy. I was only 23 and already winning world championship medals. I knew I was heading in the right direction.’

Time proved him right. In autumn 2019, Bartosz Zmarzlik became individual speedway world champion for the first time, winning three rounds. He became only the third Pole – after Jerzy Szczakiel and Tomasz Gollob – to claim the sport’s most prestigious individual title. His achievement was widely celebrated in Poland: Przegląd Sportowy named him the country’s Athlete of the Year, and President Andrzej Duda awarded him the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.

What followed was a period of sustained dominance. Apart from 2021, when he finished second overall, Zmarzlik has remained at the top of world speedway. He won individual world championship titles in 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. With six gold medals, he has equalled the achievements of the sport’s all-time greats – Sweden’s Tony Rickardsson and New Zealand’s Ivan Mauger – becoming the most successful speedway rider in Polish history and one of the greatest of all time.

Zmarzlik is renowned for his physical strength, resilience and dynamic riding style, combining aggression with remarkable efficiency. He currently represents Motor Lublin in the PGE Ekstraliga. Having turned 30 in 2025, he appears far from finished – and there is every reason to expect that further success still lies ahead on the world’s speedway tracks.

Photo: https://zmarzlik.com

KRZYSZTOF SZUJECKI

is a Polish sports historian specializing in the history of the modern sports movement. He is the author of books, including the multi-volume „History of Sport in Poland,” „Encyclopedia of the Olympic Games,” and „Sports Life in the Polish People’s Republic.”

SOURCE: DlaPolonii.pl