Jagoda Zukowska US Fan Club! (Poland, @jadzia_bb)

Bielsko-Biała’s Fastest: The Rise of Sprinter Jagoda Żukowska

When Jagoda Żukowska crossed the finish line in Tampere, Finland on the evening of August 10, 2025 — anchoring Poland’s women’s 4×100 meter relay team to a bronze medal at the European Under-20 Athletics Championships — she stepped off the track and said something that captured exactly where she stood in her young career: “The emotions are indescribable. This is the first medal we’ve ever won at an international competition.” What followed was laughter, because the path to that podium had run through some near-misses and hard lessons, and the sheer relief of it was hard to contain. She was 18 years old. She was in the middle of her final year of secondary school. And she had just become a European Under-20 medalist.

Żukowska is one of the most exciting sprinting prospects in Polish athletics today — a short-distance specialist from Bielsko-Biała in Silesia who progressed through the national youth system with conspicuous speed, collecting medals at the domestic level almost from the moment she entered the sport, and graduating to the international stage with the relay squad that has steadily transformed Poland’s junior women’s sprint program into a genuine European contender.

Roots: Bielsko-Biała and the Foothills of the Beskidy

Jagoda Żukowska was born on November 2, 2006, in Bielsko-Biała — an industrial and cultural city on the Biała River in the Silesian Voivodeship, at the northern foothills of the Beskidy mountains in southern Poland. It is a city with a strong athletic tradition, and Żukowska grew up within the orbit of the SLiS Just Team Bielsko-Biała athletics club, the organization that would develop her from a junior runner into a national team sprinter.

The person at the center of her development in those formative years was coach Joanna Justyniak. The Radio Bielsko profile of Żukowska identifies her as “wychowanka nieodżałowanej śp. Joanny Justyniak” — a phrase that translates to something like “a pupil of the deeply missed, late Joanna Justyniak” — a note of grief woven into the story of Żukowska’s athletic formation. The connection to her coach is clearly one that shaped not just her sprinting but the way she approaches competition, training, and the larger picture of what it means to pursue a sport seriously.

Emerging on the National Stage: 2023

The 2023 season was Żukowska’s breakout year at the national youth level, and it announced her as one of the most talented sprinters in her age group in Poland. In February 2023, competing in Rzeszów at the Polish Indoor Championships in the U18 category, she won the silver medal in the 60 meters — running 7.66 seconds and finishing just one hundredth of a second behind the winner, Oliwia Kasprzak, who would later become a regular teammate in the national relay squad.

The outdoor season that summer confirmed what the indoor result had suggested. In July 2023, at the Polish U18 Athletics Championships held at the famous Silesian Stadium in Chorzów — one of Poland’s most storied sporting venues — Żukowska delivered a double bronze medal performance. She ran 11.83 seconds in the 100-meter final, a result described in the club’s own report as reaching “mistrzowska klasa” (championship class), and then added a second bronze in the 200 meters with a time of 24.39 seconds. Two medals at the Polish national championships in her primary events, in the same weekend, in a field described as operating at an “exceptionally high level.”

That summer she also made her first appearance at an international championship. Poland’s U20 women’s relay team traveled to Jerusalem for the 2023 European Athletics U20 Championships — the 27th edition of the competition, held in Israel. The Polish squad, featuring the crop of young sprinters who would become Żukowska’s close teammates over the following two years, finished fifth in the 4×100 meter relay. It was a top-eight finish at a major European championship for a team that had not yet won anything at that level — and the foundation for what was to come.

Building in 2024: Lima and the Near Miss

The 2024 season raised the stakes considerably. In January 2024, competing in Wrocław at indoor meets, Żukowska continued developing her indoor speed across the 60-meter hurdles. At the Polish U20 Indoor Championships in Wrocław that year, she won the silver medal in the 60 meters — a second consecutive national runner-up finish indoors, demonstrating consistent high-level performance at the domestic youth level.

The season’s defining event came in late August 2024: the World Athletics U20 Championships in Lima, Peru. For a 17-year-old from Bielsko-Biała, competing at a world championship on the other side of the globe was a formative experience on every level. In the individual 100 meters, Żukowska reached the semi-finals — running 11.79 seconds in her preliminary heat to advance — before finishing last in her semi-final round with a time of 11.98, narrowly missing the final. The gap between reaching a World Championships semi-final and not making the final is, in a sense, the most educational gap in athletics: close enough to see the standard, far enough to know what work remains.

The relay, however, told a more hopeful story. Poland’s women’s 4×100 team — now a well-drilled squad of sprinters who had competed together at multiple levels — advanced through the heats and reached the final in Lima, where they finished in fourth place. One position off the podium at a World Championships, with a year’s improvement still ahead. After the race, Żukowska would later recall telling her teammates: the next time, they needed to bring a medal. She meant it.

2025: Polish Champion, Personal Bests, and European Bronze

The 2024-25 indoor season proved to be a more complicated road than expected. In a Radio Bielsko interview published in October 2025, Żukowska spoke candidly about suffering an injury during the previous indoor campaign that forced a period of recovery: “In the previous indoor season I was in good form, but I got injured. I knew I had to come back. I promised myself that. And I came back.” The injury and its aftermath gave the 2025 outdoor season a particular emotional weight — it was not just a competitive year but a year of return and vindication.

On January 12, 2025, at the KGHM Ślęza Arena in Wrocław, Żukowska announced her return with two performances that set the European U20 season alight. She ran 7.38 seconds in the 60 meters — the best time by any U20 woman in Europe at that point in the season — and 24.08 seconds in the 200-meter short track, also the best European U20 mark to that date. Two European U20 leading times in one session, at a single indoor meet in January. Polish athletics took notice.

The outdoor season continued the upward arc. At the 79th Polish Athletics Championships Under-20 in Włocławek at the end of July, Żukowska did something she had never done before: she won. Running 11.46 seconds in the 100 meter final — a new personal best — she claimed the gold medal and the title of Polish Under-20 Champion. It was, by some margin, the fastest she had ever run over the distance. The time ranked her among the leading U20 women in Europe that season. Her club’s report celebrated the result with evident pride: “She won the gold medal and the title of Polish champion in the 100 meters, setting a new personal best.”

The relay squad also contributed to the celebration at Włocławek — the team of Amelia Roszkowska, Katarzyna Potok, Alicja Garnysz, and Jagoda Żukowska ran 48.32 seconds to place fourth in the national 4×100 relay, missing the podium by just half a second.

Then came August — and Tampere.

Tampere 2025: A European Medal and a Record

The 2025 European Athletics U20 Championships, held August 7-10 at Ratina Stadium in Tampere, Finland, represented the biggest stage Żukowska had competed on to that point. Ratina is a Finnish stadium of genuine atmosphere and history, and hosting nearly 1,300 athletes from 48 nations in front of a Finnish crowd that genuinely loves track and field gave the championships a charged atmosphere that Poland’s relay squad stepped into with clear preparation and intent.

The individual 100 meters did not go as hoped — none of the Polish sprint specialists in the women’s short events reached the individual final, a fact that the Polish sporting press acknowledged with some candor after the championships concluded. The relay, though, was a different story entirely.

In the heats of the women’s 4×100 meters, Poland ran 44.63 seconds with a squad that included Żukowska on the anchor leg, advancing to the final as the top qualifier in their heat. In the final on the last day of competition, the four-woman squad of Małgorzata Pojęta, Wiktoria Gajosz, Oliwia Kasprzak, and Jagoda Żukowska ran with clean baton exchanges and sustained speed through all four legs. Pojęta led off with the fastest opening split of the finalists; Gajosz and Kasprzak maintained the pace through the middle legs; and Żukowska took the baton in second place, running the anchor on a track where Italy — who won comfortably in 43.72 — had a dominant lead, and Great Britain was closing hard with a strong finisher of their own.

The final result: Poland in 44.07 seconds, bronze medal, and a new Polish U20 national record — the first time a Polish junior women’s relay squad had run under the previous record by 17 hundredths of a second.

Coming off the track, Żukowska summarized the journey with characteristic clarity: “The emotions are indescribable. This is the first medal we’ve ever won at an international competition. Two years ago our relay was fifth at the European U20 Championships in Jerusalem. Last year we finished the World Junior Championships in Lima in fourth place. Before the race I told the girls that this time there had to be a medal.” There was.

Life Between Races: School, Horses, and Modeling

The Radio Bielsko profile from October 2025 offers a glimpse into the life of a young Polish athlete navigating the dual demands of elite junior sport and secondary school, and what emerges is a portrait of unusual maturity balanced by a genuine sense of ordinariness. In the weeks after Tampere, having returned from Finland with a bronze medal and a national record, Żukowska went back to school — specifically to the final year of secondary school, preparing for the Polish national matriculation examination, the matura.

“I had to return to school reality. At first it was a shock, but also a relief. The whole season lasted several months — a lot of races, stress, tension. That break, a month without training, was necessary. I rested, caught up with friends, went on vacation, for a month I even returned to horse riding — another sport I’ve always really liked. For the mind — priceless,” she said.

That casual mention of horse riding is revealing: Żukowska came to athletics through a background that included other physical pursuits, and she clearly approaches athletic development with a breadth that extends beyond the track. The willingness to step away, recharge, and return mentally fresh is a characteristic that experienced coaches frequently identify in athletes who sustain their progress over time — and she demonstrates it even at 18.

She is also a model. In 2023, Żukowska competed in the Miss Stars Poland pageant and won two titles — Miss Kroniki Beskidzkiej and Miss of the Audience. Her presence on social media, Instagram at the handle @jadzia_bb, reflects both her athletic identity and her interests beyond the sport. The combination of sprinting speed, academic discipline, and public-facing personality has made her one of the more visible young faces in Polish athletics, and the profile piece in Super Express (Poland’s popular tabloid-format newspaper) in 2025 described her straightforwardly as a beautiful athletic talent and a model — noting that more eyes would be finding her Instagram as her results continued to improve.

Club, Senior Appearances, and the Broader Polish Sprint Scene

Żukowska competes for SLiS Just Team Bielsko-Biała, a club that has developed multiple national-level athletes and whose senior women’s relay program has been a productive pipeline for Polish junior sprint talent. Her relay teammates at Tampere — Pojęta, Gajosz, and Kasprzak — represent a generation of Polish female sprinters who came through the system simultaneously, and their collective chemistry has clearly been a competitive asset. The progress from 5th place in Jerusalem (2023) to 4th in Lima (2024) to 3rd in Tampere (2025) follows a convincing trajectory.

She has also had exposure to senior international athletics. According to her Wikipedia profile, she appeared in the heats of the 4×100 meters relay at the 2025 European Athletics Team Championships — a senior-level competition — as part of Poland’s squad, giving her experience competing alongside and against women well into their senior careers. That kind of exposure at 18, even in a preliminary role, is meaningful developmental experience.

The Memoriał Ireny Szewińskiej in Bydgoszczy in May 2025 — a prestigious Polish athletics meeting held in honor of one of the country’s greatest ever athletes — was the occasion for another relay landmark. Poland’s U20 4×100 squad set a new Polish U20 relay record at that meet, breaking the previous mark and establishing the time that would later be further improved at Tampere.

Personal Bests and World Athletics Profile

As of April 2026, Żukowska holds a World Athletics profile (athlete code 14952214) and is ranked among the top 430 women in the world in the 100 meters — a meaningful position for a 19-year-old who is still in the opening phases of her senior career. Her performance scores on the World Athletics tables reflect a well-rounded short sprint profile, with her 60-meter and relay marks particularly strong indicators of raw top-end speed.

Her personal bests, as recognized by World Athletics, span several events. The 100 meters personal best of 11.46 seconds was set on July 25, 2025, at the Polish U20 Championships in Włocławek. The 4×100 meter relay best of 44.07 seconds was set on August 10, 2025, at Tampere. The 60-meter personal best of 7.38 seconds was set on January 12, 2025, in Wrocław. The 200-meter short track personal best of 24.08 was set at the same Wrocław session in January 2025. Her outdoor 200-meter personal best of 24.02 seconds was set on June 15, 2025.

Looking Forward: The 2026 Season and Beyond

In the Radio Bielsko interview from October 2025, Żukowska laid out her short and medium-term plans with the organized thinking of someone who has learned to balance ambition with realism. She described returning to training in October, planning a standard indoor season from January 2026, with the major outdoor competitions arriving in spring and summer. “In August there will be the European Championships, already in the senior category. It would be nice to be there, even in a relay. I know it’s difficult, but I was already in the senior squad once, so maybe I’ll make it a second time,” she said — referring to her appearance at the European Team Championships earlier in 2025.

The 2026 European Athletics Championships are being held in Birmingham, United Kingdom. A place in the senior Polish relay squad at those championships would be a significant step forward — competing not at the U20 level but among Europe’s established senior sprinters. She acknowledged the difficulty of that goal directly while maintaining clear-eyed optimism about the possibility.

Beyond 2026, she speaks with the same patient confidence: “I’ve always been like this — I don’t like to rush anything. I prefer to mature athletically and mentally. But I know that if my health holds up and I stay consistent, in a few years I can fight for something really big.”

There is also the matter of her education. The matura examination — Poland’s national secondary school leaving certificate — fell in May 2026. The challenge of preparing for a high-stakes academic examination while simultaneously planning an athletics season is one that many young athletes manage imperfectly; the Radio Bielsko profile conveys that Żukowska approaches it with the same methodical sensibility she brings to training. “It’s natural to me. My daily life is school and life here. Races are a smaller part of the year,” she said.

A Voice for the New Generation

One of the more thoughtful passages in the Radio Bielsko profile is Żukowska’s reflection on the generational shift underway in Polish athletics. The sport’s senior stars — who carried the Polish athletics flag for the better part of a decade — are nearing the end of their careers, and the question of who succeeds them has become increasingly prominent in Polish sports media. “You can see it’s changing,” she said. “The older generation is stepping back, and we’re starting to take their positions. It’s nice, but also a responsibility. We have to show that we can continue those successes.”

There is no bravado in how she says it — more acknowledgment than ambition, a sense of duty alongside the desire to compete. For a teenager who grew up watching Polish athletics from the grandstands and found herself on the podium of a European championship by 18, the awareness of that larger context seems entirely genuine.

She also speaks specifically about the importance of balance — of knowing when to rest, when to disconnect, when to be a regular young woman who meets friends and goes on vacation rather than a constant sprint machine. “After such a season, a person is exhausted, especially mentally,” she said. “You have to learn to rest. Sometimes it’s better to come down to earth, meet friends, live normally, and only then return to the stadium. Then you have your head in the right place.” It sounds straightforward, but the ability to rest with intention — and not with guilt — is harder than it sounds, and the fact that she articulates it so clearly at 18 bodes well.

Social Media

Żukowska maintains an active Instagram presence under the handle @jadzia_bb — a nickname derived from “Jadzia,” the diminutive of Jagoda common in Polish, combined with “bb” for Bielsko-Biała, her hometown. Her profile reflects the dual identity of an athlete who is equally comfortable posting from the track and from the rest of her life.

No confirmed commercial sponsorship arrangements were publicly documented at the time of this writing beyond her club affiliation with Just Team Bielsko-Biała and her participation in national squad programs under the Polish Athletics Federation (PZLA).

Career Highlights and Personal Bests

• Born: November 2, 2006, Bielsko-Biała, Poland
• Club: SLiS Just Team Bielsko-Biała
• Events: 60m, 100m, 200m, 4×100m relay
• Personal bests:
  • 100m: 11.46 — Polish U20 Championships, Włocławek, July 25, 2025
  • 200m: 24.02 — June 15, 2025
  • 60m (indoor): 7.38 — KGHM Ślęza Arena, Wrocław, January 12, 2025
  • 200m short track (indoor): 24.08 — Wrocław, January 12, 2025
  • 4×100m relay: 44.07 (Polish U20 national record) — European U20 Championships, Tampere, August 10, 2025
• World Athletics ranking: #430 women’s 100m, #625 women’s 200m (April 2026)
• European U20 Championships 2025 (Tampere): Bronze medal, 4×100m relay (44.07, Polish U20 record)
• World U20 Championships 2024 (Lima): 4th place, 4×100m relay; individual 100m semi-finalist
• European U20 Championships 2023 (Jerusalem): 5th place, 4×100m relay
• Polish U20 Champion (outdoor, 2025): 100m, Włocławek (11.46s)
• Polish U20 bronze medallist (outdoor, 2024): 100m, Radom
• Polish U18 double bronze medallist (outdoor, 2023): 100m (11.83s) and 200m (24.39s), Chorzów
• Polish U20 indoor silver medallist (2024): 60m, Wrocław
• Polish U18 indoor silver medallist (2023): 60m, Rzeszów (7.66s)
• Miss Stars Poland 2023: Winner of Miss Kroniki Beskidzkiej and Miss Publiczności (Miss of the Audience)
• Social media: Instagram: @jadzia_bb