Pawel Tarnowski might have just missed out on making the top 10 for the iQFOiL medal series, but there are good reasons for the Polish rider to be cheerful.

“I became a father just two days ago, so I am super excited to get back to Poland as soon as I can to meet my new son for the first time.”

Mother and baby are doing fine, although Pawel was a little sad to miss the birth of Hendrick. “I only came out to The Hague last weekend, I left it as late as possible as the birth was meant to happen two weeks ago. But of course you can’t choose the right moment to suit you, so we had to wait a bit more.

“I had to change my flight twice, and it’s all been quite complicated, because I wanted to leave it as late as possible coming here. It’s super, super important for me to be next to my wife, and I trained at home by myself while the guys, all the national team, were already here.”

ust to throw further spice into a complicated scenario, Pawel suffered an injury just a few days before the championship.

“While I was doing one of my last training sessions, I snapped my pinky toe. I was doing a tack, almost completing a foiling tack and I was trying to move my feet really quickly. Unfortunately I crashed my foot straight into the foot strap and got my pinky the wrong side and did myself an injury. I thought maybe it was just bruised. It’s a very common injury, we are training a lot and it happened to me already two times this year. But this time it hurt more and when I got an x-ray that’s when I found out it was broken.”

It’s a critical injury that surely affected his performance across the week. “It’s very painful. And the worst nightmare is just putting your foot into the foot strap every time you tack. I know I lost a couple of points from the problems I had this week. I finished 13th on the leaderboard. I know if I was in good shape most probably I would be fighting in the medal series but well, this is the risk we’re taking.

“So I might have missed a medal here, but my new son is my medal, I am very happy. My wife is feeling good as well. This is the most important thing for me at the moment. My toe will cure eventually for sure and I’ll be back in a few months, ready to fight for the big championships again.”