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| Born | 25 October 1932 Warsaw, Poland |
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| Died | 11 January 2005 (aged 72) Warsaw, Poland |
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| Sport | Fencing | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Medal record
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Jerzy Pawłowski (Warsaw, October 25, 1932 – January 11, 2005, Warsaw) was a Polish fencer and double agent.
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While a major in the Polish Army, Pawłowski won the gold medal in the individual men's saber event at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, the first non-Hungarian in 48 years to win an Olympic sabre gold medal. He took part in a total of six Olympic Games from 1952 to 1972, garnering additionally three silver medals and a bronze at the 1956, 1960 and 1964 Summer Olympics.[1]
In 1967 the International Fencing Federation declared him the best fencer of all time.
He was arrested on April 24, 1975, and on April 8, 1976, was sentenced by a military court in Warsaw to 25 years' prison, 10 years' suspension of civic rights, demotion to private, forfeiture of all his property for having committed espionage since 1964 on behalf of an unnamed NATO country, and his name was erased from Polish sporting records. He had in fact been a double agent for the U.S. CIA from 1964, and for Polish intelligence from 1950.
Ten years later, he was to have been included in one of the spy exchanges at Berlin's Glienicke Bridge but chose to remain in Poland and spent the rest of his life as a painter and faith healer in Warsaw, where he died.
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| Preceded by Elżbieta Krzesińska |
Polish Sportspersonality of the Year 1957 |
Succeeded by Zdzisław Krzyszkowiak |
| Preceded by Sobiesław Zasada |
Polish Sportspersonality of the Year 1968 |
Succeeded by Waldemar Baszanowski |
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