The high kneel is a canoe that looks like a kazoo: the fastest, least stable, and most incongruous of all canoes; surely the most confounding of all boats to paddle. (Its formal name is the Olympic canoe because its whole purpose is for racing in the Olympics.) It's an extreme, preposterous hull that feels weightless, disdains equilibrium and requires a paddler to be up on one knee, teetering at wobbly heights. Zibi, a Polish paddler who now makes his home in Chicago, is the fastest high-kneel canoeist in this country, at one time the 12th fastest in the world. And he is on a mission to win an Olympic medal in Australia in 2000. He's come a long way since he first tried and flipped such a boat 10 years ago on a cold November day as a Polish schoolboy named Zbigniev Wadzynski. His coaches saw possibilities after he flipped all winter-and still paddled in February. Now he paddles with a presence that conjures images of heroic figures in WPA murals of the 1930s; he makes the boat seem just a technicality, hardly noticed, like shoes on sprinters. He makes it look that easy. Zbigniev took to calling himself Zibi when he came to Chicago five years ago. He spoke no English, which Chicago spoke relentlessly (though it has the largest Polish population of all cities except Warsaw). He worked as a roofer and carpenter and began picking up tradesman's English and TV idioms. Early on he learned that Americans resolutely balked-culturally, cognitively, collectively, phonetically-at enunciating the clashing consonants of his full name. "I said Zbigniev," he says. "Guys said 'What?' So I said 'OK, Zibi'. It was easy for me to spell." He didn't like Chicago. He came because he was the only son and youngest sibling in a close family committed by circumstance to shuttle back and forth between Poland and Chicago; his passage to Chicago was exceedingly ill-timed because at the time he was the Junior High Kneel Champion in Poland. He had been winning Polish nationals, finishing high in the World Championships, and had prospects of full subsidies to train in the high-kneel utopia of Eastern Europe. He had to leave all that because family ties were stronger. "I was not happy here," he says. "I didn't speak English. I didn't have friends. I didn't paddle. It was winter and I worked construction. Then I went back to Poland to finish school and came back to Chicago, which was worse than coming the first time. I started thinking about a new life in Chicago, which I didn't want. One day I was riding in a car on the freeway next to Lake Michigan, and we went past a lagoon; I saw a canoeist, and had to find him." He found Steve Bornhoeft, a college student who was the only active high kneeler of 7 million people in the Chicago area. He found the Lincoln Park Boat Club, which occupied a cavernous old boathouse by the lagoon and had a dozen brittle old high kneelers: a laggardly and decadent fleet but the only one in mid-America. He had abandoned hope of ever paddling in Chicago and had long since despaired the fantasy of a boat club existing in America. At first glance this one looked like a sanctum for scullers, kayakers and urban dilettantes who would shun high-kneel canoes like Slavic consonants. But it was real, and in this foreign country he would not be disheartened that it was not utopian. From then on he liked Chicago. (He was in fact one in a long procession of paddling champions who came from Eastern Europe-up to six each year-who chanced upon the Lincoln Park Boat Club. Zibi, however, was the most tenacious and talented in a long while.) Zibi and Steve became friends and training partners, ignoring a language barrier that was unimportant on water though bothersome on shore. They raced in a club regatta that also served as the 1994 Midwest Regional. They were the only high kneelers and finished first and second in all high-kneel events, qualifying for the national championships in Seattle. Zibi said he wasn't ready. Steve persuaded him to go along just to look around. Zibi said he wouldn't really be competing: he'd just be paddling for fun. He'd be the stranger from Lincoln Park, somebody nobody knew. Just for fun he finished fifth in the 1,000 meter and sixth in the 500, and soon everybody knew him. "Guys came over and wanted to talk to me," he says. "They said, 'Hey, who are you? What's going on?' They didn't believe I had been training without a coach. My problem was I couldn't understand them: all I could do was shrug and smile. But I began to think I could compete for America. I thought about it all the way back to Chicago. My mom said, 'OK that's your choice, that's your life.'" In Chicago he trained. He did carpentry. He practiced his English. In the 1995 nationals he finished third in the 500 and fourth in the 1,000. In 1996 he was second in the 1,000 and third in the 500, in both the National Championships and U.S. Team Trials. In 1997 he was on the National Team training at Olympic training centers in Colorado Springs, Colo., and Chula Vista, Calif., working with Polish coach Jerzy Dziadkowiec. He won the 1,000 and finished second in the 500 in both the National Championships and the U.S. Team Trials. He competed in the World Championships and came in fourth in the 1,000-meter semifinals, one place short of the finals. He was now the best high kneeler in the country, full of raw talent and power and showing every sign of going faster. He was catapulted into sudden stardom in an arcane sport, which made things stressful. "I'd had deep feelings about the World Championships," he says. "But now it was all about the big, big games-the 2000 Olympics-and not just making the games, which is what the Americans think about, but winning the medals, which is what the Europeans think about. I was 100 percent focused on training and competition, but I was always needing money. My parents had been my sponsors for two years, but I couldn't ask them for more money. I got some money, not much, from an insurance agent in the Polish community and some from my girlfriend's beauty salon. I moved to Chula Vista and tried the American program, but after three months I didn't feel good about the training. And I was running out of money and needed work and couldn't find any. So I went back to Chicago." Zibi had become (even by his own reckoning) the enfant terrible of the U.S. Canoe and Kayak Team (USCKT). He didn't like the training plan, or understand much of it. He was disillusioned with his coach, who was a first-rate coach for kayakers but only improvised training in the abstruse technicalities of world-class canoeing. And Zibi was sorely disappointed with the USCKT, which required him to pay most of his own way and then said it couldn't afford an actual high-kneel coach. He brooded on what might have been had he stayed in Poland and received bountiful subsidies and world class coaching to refine his technique-without which he saw no chance for Olympic medals. "In competition on this level, technique is 80 percent of the difference between winning the medal and trailing back with the other guys," he says. "On the American team we're all very strong. We've got good endurance. But all of us-including me-have very bad technique. I told the guys I'm going back to Chicago because I know myself, and I want to train so I feel good about it afterwards: I want to do my own program. The director told me if I leave Chula Vista I'll never be very fast, but it's my choice, so just go and they'll be looking for me." In Chicago he ate health food and dedicated himself to workouts-paddling, running, lifting weights-twice a day and all alone. After a month he called USCKT and withdrew from the European tour, largely because he couldn't afford it. He competed reluctantly, and poorly, in a minor regatta: his coach and teammates thought something was wrong, like his plan wasn't working. He told them he'd be ready in three months; he'd see them at the nationals. Zibi turned up as promised at the 1998 national championships, and proceeded complacently through a sequence of tragicomedies that would have become legendary in a less obscure sport. He almost didn't get in because he entered too late; officials relented only when the coaches signed a letter urging the rule be bent for him. He handily won the 1,000 but drew stern warnings for wearing an unsanctioned jersey and for stopping to lounge on an unsanctioned dock when he was supposed to go directly to the station where boats were weighed and measured. He won the 500 by two seconds, an amazing margin, but then he touched an unsanctioned dock when the judges' tolerance was terminally frayed, and this time he was disqualified. He looked to be manipulating absurdities just to see how far a star's arrogance-or perhaps anguish-could push the racing establishment. He, of course, denies this. "I know I'm a difficult guy," he says. "USCKT has a problem with me because I'm not quiet when I don't understand some plan. But this time I just felt good. I had a new strategy. I was in control. And I won by so far that I forgot about everything. I didn't care about the medals. Everybody said, 'Zibi, you're the man.'" "He knew better," says Zibi's sister Marzena Wadzynska, who is closer to him than anybody. "I have to say he was irresponsible. He knew what he did was stupid. But I could feel the tension in him; so could my father. He was all alone. He was crying for help." Disqualified or not, he thought he should be selected by acclamation to compete in the World Championships in Hungary. But the rules required a formality of time trials; at the trials, as if hampered by the burden of stardom or the lack of competitors, he was disconcertingly slow against the clock: he didn't make the cut. Zibi said he couldn't afford the airfare anyway. USCKT said that by then it did not fancy traveling to Europe with the angst and hubris of its enfant terrible. The American team, without Zibi, finished below 20th place, where keeping score was more embarrassing than computational. Then things began looking up. A new boat of revolutionary design emerged from Poland. It looked less like a kazoo than a whistle with dragonfly wings, and it proved incrementally and significantly faster-10 seconds over 1,000 meters; it won all nine events in the world championships-though it was so tippy that it had the best high kneelers in Europe either breaking records or flipping like novices. Zibi paddled the new boat just long enough to know that he would have to change his whole technique to make it fast. And he resolved to master it. The Polish community in Chicago threw a fund-raising banquet which covered most of the price of the new boat. USCKT hired a canoeing coach named Marek Ploch, who came from Poland by way of Canada and proved wise and resourceful in the nuances of high kneel technique. His guidance was subtle but pointed; he revealed critical insights that no one else had ever shared. "I believe this guy," Zibi says-the highest compliment he pays anyone. Zibi went back to the national team, and his technique soon began to improve. He began to paddle faster. "I know he was a problem child," says Ploch. "He was upset because no one here could make him faster. When he went back to Chicago he was looking for different ways to make himself faster. He was almost ready to go back to Poland when he found I was going to coach
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