From 23 July to 8 August 2021, Tokyo will be the sports capital of the world – the city will host the Games of the XXXII Olympiad – Tokyo 2020. The games will be staged a year later than originally planned due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Olympic Games are a special event, held every four years, and an Olympic medal is an exceptionally valuable trophy for every athlete.

The capital of Japan will host Olympics athletes for the second time. In 1964, Polish athletes won 23 medals there, and Dąbrowski’s Mazurka (the Polish National Anthem) was played for them as many as seven times.

Now, with a new generation of competitors entering the Olympic Games, it will be extremely difficult to achieve such a result. Yet, we hope that the white and red team will manage to exceed the number of 11 medals, which is the tally of Olympic trophies taken by Poles in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

Our greatest hopes rest on the men’s volleyball team – the current world champions. It is this team that the 200 złoty coin issued by Narodowy Bank Polski is dedicated to. Both the obverse and the reverse of the coin feature silhouettes of the players soaring over the net and knocking the ball into their rivals’ field. We hope that the Polish volleyball team will be just as impressive (and successful) at the Olympic Games.

Other sports we are pinning our medal hopes on are athletics and water sports (kayaking, rowing, and sailing). The reverse of the 10 złoty coin features the silhouettes of two female competitors in a double kayak. The obverse, in turn, bears the image of the famous Fuji volcano, with cherry blossom branches symbolising the host country of the Tokyo Olympic Games.

Henryk Urbaś
Polish Olympic Committee

Coins linked with an article