N+1 query problem with @ManyToOne Association

Hibernate ORM
1

Hello,

I have the following relationships: A Sponsor has many Events, and an Event belongs to one Sponsor.

Code:

@Entity
@Table(name = "sponsors")
public final class Sponsor {

  @OneToMany(mappedBy = "sponsor", cascade = CascadeType.ALL, orphanRemoval = true)
  private Set<Event> events = new HashSet<>();

  \\...
}

@Entity
@Table(name = "events")
public final class Event {

 @ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
 @NotNull private Sponsor sponsor;

  \\...
}

Even though I place an explicit Lazy FetchType annotation on Sponsor, I encounter an N+1 problem.
Whenever all events are being fetched, an additional SQL query will be invoked — fetching each Event’s Sponsor. So if I have 5 events, I’ll encounter 5 additional queries

Below is my JPA CriteriaBuilder query (generic):

CriteriaBuilder criteriaBuilder = entityManager.getCriteriaBuilder();
CriteriaQuery<T> query = criteriaBuilder.createQuery(clazz);
Root<T> root = query.from(clazz);

query.select(root);
return entityManager.createQuery(query).getResultList();

I’ve tried adding optional = false to my @ManytoOne annotation, as well as a @Fetch(FetchMode.JOIN) annotation, but neither work.

Is this a bug? Is there a simple way to solve this issue?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Best,
Ron