He is best known for winning the gold medal at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow and the bras d'honneur gesture which he showed to the hostile Soviet crowd.

Kozakiewicz was born on 8 December 1953 to a Polish family in Šalčininkai, Lithuanian SSR, near Vilnius as the fourth and youngest of four siblings.

[2] The family moved to Poland in 1958 as part of the last wave of the post-war repatriations of Poles living in the Soviet Union, first staying in a refugee camp in Gryfice before settling in Gdynia where Władysław's father found a job as a dockworker.

1948) was an aspiring pole vaulter (later switched to decathlon) at the local club, Bałtyk Gdynia, and one day in 1966 encouraged his then 13-year-old brother to also give athletics a try.

[4] A year later, after changing the coach to Ryszard Tomaszewski, he broke the Polish senior record with 5.35 metres and made his major international debut taking silver at the 1974 European Championships in Rome.

Soon after, however, he was disqualified by the Polish Athletic Association (PZLA) for competing in the shoes of the Japanese manufacturer Onitsuka Tiger, with which he signed a contract a year earlier, instead of Adidas, which was then the official sponsor of the federation.

This resulted in Kozakiewicz being barred from competing abroad for six months and marked the beginning of a series of disputes with the national federation and bans for insubordination.

The 1980 season did not start very well as he finished only fourth at the 1980 European Indoor Championships in Sindelfingen, West Germany, the competition won by the Soviet Konstantin Volkov, who would be Kozakiewicz's main rival at the upcoming Moscow Olympics.

The record was later that summer bettered by two Frenchmen, first Thierry Vigneron added three centimetres to it and then Philippe Houvion another two, setting it at 5.77 metres.

The atmosphere at the stadium, however, as it was for the entire games was very hostile with the local Soviet crowd booing, hissing, and whistling at every non-Soviet competitor's attempt.

[9] This irritated Kozakiewicz who, after jumping 5.70 metres, higher than any other competitor that day, showed the bras d'honneur gesture in defiance to the jeering spectators.

The photos of the incident circled the globe, with the exception of the Soviet Union and its satellites, although the event was broadcast live on TV in many countries of the Eastern Bloc.

In 1982, struggling to get into form after splitting from his long-time coach Ryszard Tomaszewski, Kozakiewicz won what would be his last medal for Poland, a bronze at the 1982 European Indoor Championships in Milan.

Kozakiewicz, not willing to take part in what he saw as a farcical event, took only one successful attempt at 5.40 metres before feigning an injury and calling it quits.

[13] His performance angered the Polish federation which demanded that he immediately return to Poland from a meeting in Brussels in which he took part soon after the Friendship Games and after he refused he was disqualified again.