Begalsky, Andrzej

Andrzej Begalski was born on March 5, 1953 in the village of Gerczyn of the commune of Mirsk in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship . He trained at the Gornik Radlin and Gornik Pszow clubs under the guidance of coach Anthony Zygmunt. Later he moved permanently to Warsaw and began to represent the capital's boxing club "Legia".

He first made his name in 1971, becoming the champion of Poland among juniors and taking part in two match meetings with the junior team of Germany. A year later, he won a bronze medal in the adult championship of Poland, won the home tournament in Poznan and performed at the European Junior Championships in Bucharest, where he was stopped by the Soviet boxer Mikhail Subbotin at the quarterfinals stage. In 1973, among other things, he won the international tournament in Bydgoszcz.

In 1974, Begalski won the Polish Championship in Gdansk and joined the main team of the Polish national team. This season he had a chance to box at the first world championship in Havana , but he could not get into the number of winners here, in the quarterfinal he was defeated by points by the Nigerian Fatai Ainla . He also boxed in a match against the US team in Warsaw, losing to American heavyweight Marvin Stinson .

At the home European Championship in Katowice, he defeated all his rivals in the tournament bracket, including in the finals sensationally took over the current champion, USSR representative Viktor Ulyanich , and thereby won a gold medal. In addition, he was the best at the international tournament of Vaclav Prochazka in Czechoslovakia.

Thanks to a series of successful performances, he was awarded the right to defend the country's honor at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal , but in the first match of the category over 81 kg with a score of 0-5, he was defeated by American John Tate and immediately dropped out of the fight for medals.

After the Montreal Olympics, Andrzej Begalski remained in the Polish national team and continued to take part in major international tournaments. So, in 1979, he boxed at the European Championships in Cologne , where in the first round of the quarterfinal match he was knocked out by the Soviet boxer Khoren Injyan . Soon after the end of these competitions, he decided to end his athlete’s career, losing his place in the national team to young Polish boxers ^{[1] [2] [3]} .

In total, he spent 237 fights in amateur Olympic boxing, of which 201 won and 36 lost.

Having completed his sports career, he graduated from the University of Wroclaw with a degree in physical education. Subsequently, he worked as a driver in the mines and at the same time coached boxers, judokas and shot putters. At one time he tried himself in politics, in 2005 he was nominated as a candidate in the parliamentary elections, but won insufficient votes.

He died on March 14, 2017 at the age of 64 in the city of Jastrzęmbe-Zdroj in the Silesian Voivodeship ^[4] .

• Andrzej Begalski - Olympic statistics at Sports-Reference.com
• Andrzej Begalski (Polish) - page on the website of the Polish Olympic Committee