In 2024, he was supposed to go down for the last time in the season, with a huge pain in his knee. A cruciate ligament injury usually sidelines athletes for many months. However, not when a world championship medal may be waiting at the bottom.

That was the first thought of Łukasz Korzestański as he positioned himself at the top of the track, squeezing between his rivals. Right after that came the second thought - the same as a few years earlier when he stood there for the first time: really, just survive it.

After everything, already at the bottom, slowly, step by step, sometimes taking breaks, he climbed onto the podium, becoming the third athlete in the world in ice cross downhill.

Łukasz Korzestański does not treat extreme sports merely by name. He lives it. Starting from his fifth birthday when he received his first rollerblades as a gift.

Łukasz Korzestański does not regard extreme sports just by name - he lives it. He started at the age of five when he was given his first rollerblades as a present.

Shortly thereafter, he joined the ice hockey section. His parents enrolled him in the club. It was shortly after they saw that the speed bumps on the neighborhood road were being used by their son as jumps. The plan was simple: to learn to skate well but above all safely.

He stayed in hockey for a longer period, and after several years of training in Poland, the time came for verification abroad. He traveled to Sweden for high school, where the junior league has been regarded as the best in Europe for years. The players he competed with then are now playing in the NHL.

Upon arrival, everything was new: Toruń, where he knew almost every corner, was exchanged for Stockholm. The family home - for a large dormitory with several students and guardians. The sports level was indeed many times higher.

After three years of progress on the ice and an accelerated course of adulthood off the ice, he joined the senior team and suffered his first serious injury: a torn cruciate ligament in his knee.

- It was a difficult moment because I had just entered senior play. After the operation and rehabilitation, I wanted to return to the country and to hockey. I went for tryouts at clubs: in Katowice and Opole - he recalls.

He started playing in the first one, but it was in the second that he met Robert Heisig, a player and promoter of ice cross downhill, who began to persuade him and increasingly draw him to the side of the extreme discipline.

- Eventually, I broke down - he smiles today. - I trained, competed, and I was impressed: the track preparation, organization, care for the athletes, the atmosphere around the event. Yet I still loved hockey. For the first few seasons, I combined playing in the league, including when I returned to Toruń, with competing in ice cross downhill. I was getting better and better. Eventually, I had to decide. And looking back, I have no regrets. In ice cross downhill everything depends on me. I can become a world champion.

Ice cross downhill is still a young discipline that has already gone through significant organizational upheavals. The COVID-19 pandemic hampered its development. Support from sponsors and companies has also decreased.

Besides his role as an athlete, Łukasz has added several more: he became an ambassador for the discipline, a coach for young athletes, an initiator and organizer of events.

The biggest problem is the lack of permanent training facilities, as there are no year-round tracks. In the summer, he trains on rollerblades in skateparks and pump tracks. When he hits the ice, he sets up obstacles: the more and the harder, the better.

- It’s important for it to be fast - he emphasizes.

- Each of the athletes is a pioneer of this discipline in their country, especially in Poland. Based on their own experiences, competitions, and training, they plan further activities. Of course, where I can gain specialized knowledge, I make use of it, for example, for physical preparation I work with a coach. For the rest, that is, technical training and organizing conditions, I am responsible myself. 

In the season of the Ice Cross Downhill World Cup, he competes with the best athletes and all over the world - from Canada to Finland. The competitions are divided into three levels: ATSX 250, 500, and 1000, the last of which is the most difficult but also the most spectacular.

- Since I got into ice cross downhill, I wanted to become a world champion. So far, I have a bronze medal. I know I can reach for more. It’s one of my two main goals. The second may still come. The organization uniting ice cross downhill is striving to include the discipline in the program of the Winter Olympic Games in 2030 in France, where the sport is really popular. If that happens, I will have a new goal - an Olympic medal - concludes Łukasz Korzestański. 

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In the 2023/2024 season, ended with a third place in the overall classification of the Ice Cross Downhill World Cup, BlackBurst was one of the main partners of Łukasz Korzestański.