In the next of our Member Federation features, we find out about how Poland is planning for the future.
As the numbers roll off his tongue, the enthusiasm and excitement rings out from his voice.
'We have 150,000 athletes within this programme,' says Piotr Dlugosielski. 'We expect that at the end of this year we will have another 50,000 within the sports project.'
The staggering figures that the General Secretary of the Polish Athletics Association is talking about are those involved in Athletics For Everyone, a scheme which was launched in September 2014 and began on 1 January last year to educate youngsters about the beauty and brilliance of track and field.
Aimed at the age groups of 7 to 15, the scheme, which has public and private investors, has become a roaring success.
It helps, too, that in shot putter Konrad Bukowiecki, the world and European junior champion, Poland has one of the best young athletes in the sport.
Bukowiecki is among those Polish stars who are part of the programme, which goes into schools to talk to the pupils, shows them how athletics works before they take part themselves.
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And then it goes beyond just being a break from a regular day of science and mathematics, as the Warsaw Marathon weekend proved last month.
'The day before the marathon, we had organised a running festival for kids and there were more than 3,000 participants from all over the country,' said Dlugosielski.
'For the young athletes, especially from small cities or villages, it is a big experience coming to Warsaw for such a big running event.
'They will have this in their memory for many months and hopefully they feel the athletics spirit.'
Poland finds itself in a good place at a time when it is nurturing the next generation, because on the back of what they are learning about the sport, they can see it for real over the next two summers.
This July, Bydgoszcz hosts the IAAF World Under-20 Championships - where Bukowiecki will be defending his title – and then next year, the northern Polish city stages the European Athletics U23 Championships for the second time.
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New stars will be born in both, and it is the current ones that are making an impact to the potential champions of tomorrow.
In August, Tomas Majewski will be bidding for an Olympic shot put hat-trick after his success in Beijing and London and he is one of many who participate in Athletics For Everyone, this national project which also involves heroes of the past, such as Pawel Czapiewski, Poland’s 2001 800m bronze medallist, visiting the schools as coaches.
Dlugosielski said: 'We use current athletes, big stars like Tomas Majewski, but it is important also to use Konrad and many other young athletes.
'It shows the teenagers and youngsters the athletes who are not much older than them who have already achieved pretty big athletics results.
'They mentor the youngsters and we have an agreement through the director of the schools. We give coaching and equipment and we have athletics training up to two to three times a week. When the kids are having fun, in training and in competition, they really like it.'
Hosting the European Athletics U23 Championships next year will bring back good memories for Dlugosielski, 39, a 400m runner who won 4x400m gold when Turku staged the competition in 1997.
Bydgoszcz will become the first city to host the event twice and Dlugosielski said: 'We have good memories of the first edition. There were really big stars like Yelena Isinbayeva (who won the pole vault with 4.65m).'
But first comes the European Athletics Championships themselves in Amsterdam between 6-10 July, and Dlugosielski is expecting a big Polish team to be there.
He said: 'We could have 80 and as far as I know, 95 percent of the Polish stars are going to be competing.
'We hope to keep the levels from previous European championships which were very successful for us…we expect many medals.'
Poland had brilliant success in Zurich in 2014, finishing sixth in the table with 12 medals, including two golds, with Adam Kszczot winning the 800m and Anita Wlodarczyk breaking the championship and national record to win the hammer with 78.76m.
Along with that glory, the team won five silvers and five bronzes, a run of success which the next generation in Poland is learning all about, giving them proof that the dream can be real.
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