Paris, Bosnia
The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris have begun and one week into the quadrennial event story lines abound.
- A rain-soaked opening ceremony floats down the Seine, which may or may not be clean enough for swimming.
- Kitesurfing and breaking debut as Olympic sports.
- A convicted child rapist plays on the Dutch volleyball team.
- Simone Biles returns on the US gymnastics team, which has already won a team gold; LeBron’s Dream Team v2 dominates Jokić’s Serbia in their basketball opener as they attempt a fifth straight gold; a pommel horse stud from Worcester, Mass. becomes a nerd meme.
- Defending women’s football champions Canada go home as the coaching staff spied on their opponents with a drone.
- Nice guy David Popovici becomes the first Romanian man to win Olympic gold in swimming.
On and on it goes, the Olympics storytelling, a sport in and of itself.
Stories is how the Olympics are told (and sold) in the United States. Watch an event, first get a mini-documentary on an athlete (not to mention an entire Netflix documentary series about Biles released before the Olympics).
Paris – Sarajevo
While America is enchanted by all the story lines, in the former Yugoslavia, Paris 2024 harkens back to Sarajevo 1984. It’s not just that the Olympic flag was mistakenly hoisted upside down in Paris—just like in Sarajevo.
It’s the anniversary.
Earlier this year, Sarajevo marked 40 years since hosting the XIV Olympic Winter Games.
In February 1984, from the moment figure skater Sanda Dubravčić lit the cauldron at the Koševo Olympic Stadium to the indoor closing ceremony at the Zetra Olympic Hall 12 days later, host city Sarajevo was the center of the world.
Sarajevo 84 was the Olympics of all Yugoslavs, proclaimed Borba in the post-Games commentary, underscoring the city’s centrality by saying: “Yugoslavia in the world, the world in Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia in Sarajevo.”
The city lived with the anniversary. The Olympic spirit (or perhaps its memory) suffused Sarajevo as if no time had passed at all.
Government agencies, the Olympic Museum, the tourism board, nonprofits and businesses, and Sarajevans themselves remembered their city’s most glorious two weeks with decorations and lights; lectures and discussions; concerts and exhibitions; even a new typeface.
Amidst it all, a kernel of hope, as the sentiment, “we did it once, we can do it again” permeated the atmosphere, albeit as tentatively as only people whose hopes have been dashed again and again can feel it.
Sarajevo 84 had been, as the author of the definitive history of the games, Jason Vuic told me, “the last gasp of communist Yugoslavia, of really being pertinent and in international spotlight for something very positive.”
No wonder Sarajevans look back on the event with nostalgia and a sense of missed opportunities; reporting on the anniversary, the media summarized the locals’ emotions as “pride and melancholy” (France 24) and “sentimentality and regret” (Balkan Insight).
Back in February, my sense was that, rather than nostalgic, celebrating a big anniversary is an act of both remembering and honoring. The memory of a past event provides a foundation for contemplating its meaning and building on its message.
Yugoslavia at the Olympics
The memory of the Olympics is long in the former Yugoslavia.
Yugoslavia, as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, first participated in the Olympic Games in 1920 at the Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium; the first winter games entry came in 1924 in Chamonix, France.
Yugoslavia’s last appearance, as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, took place in 2002 in Salt Lake City, USA; as Serbia-Montenegro the country participated one last time in Turin, Italy in 2006.
Athletes from the first Yugoslavia won three gold, two silver, and three bronze medals, all in gymnastics.
Athletes from the third Yugoslavia won two gold, two silver, and three bronze medals, in shooting as well as in basketball, volleyball, and water polo; at Barcelona 1992, three shooters from Serbia participated as independents, the same way Russian and Belorussian athletes are at Paris 2024, winning a silver and two bronzes.
The second, socialist Yugoslavia collected 23 gold, 27 silver, and 25 bronze medals throughout its history at summer games, and three silvers and a bronze at winter games.
Among individual sports, wrestling, gymnastics, boxing, and shooting were the most successful; water polo, handball, basketball, and football brought the most medals among the collective sports.
Seventy-nine medals is quite a collection of hardware; Yugoslavia in all its three iterations ranks 38th in the world by the number of Olympic medals.
A few particular successes stand out:
- Mate Parlov for his boxing gold in 1972;
- gold and silvers of the 1970s generation of basketballers, led by Krešimir Čosić, during “one of the greatest runs in international basketball history;”
- collective sports medals trifecta at Seoul 1988 for water polo (gold), basketball (silver), and handball (bronze);
- …and everybody in the former Yugoslavia knows Jure Franko who won the first Winter Olympics medal for Yugoslavia, at home in Sarajevo to boot, for giant slalom.
Sarajevo – Los Angeles
It was at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, coming directly on the heels of Sarajevo, that Yugoslavia won its greatest number of medals at a single Olympiad—18.
Its seven golds came in wrestling (2), men’s water polo, both men’s and women’s handball, and one apiece in boxing and canoeing.
The additional four silvers and seven bronzes, including in the country’s most popular sports of basketball and football, put Yugoslavia in the top ten among medal-winning countries.
Is it any wonder people reminisce about Yugoslavia’s sporting successes with nostalgia?
Paris 2024
Yugoslavia’s successor republics harbor hopes in Paris.
Slovenia, which boasted 28 Summer Olympics medals before Paris 2024, sent its largest team ever, with 90 competitors in 17 disciplines. Slalom canoeist Benjamin Savšek and sport climber Janja Garnbret are defending their respective Olympic titles. Andrea Leški has the country’s first medal, gold in judo.
As it often happens, the biggest story was of absence: Tour de France champion Tadej Pogačar refused to compete in Paris, citing the omission of his girlfriend, Urška Žigart, from the Olympic cycling team selection as having influenced his decision.
Croatia (41 Summer Olympics medals) pins its hopes on the golden Sinković brothers in rowing. Miran Maričić has the country’s first medal, bronze in shooting.
With over 100 competitors, Serbia (24 medals) has the largest team among the former republics, having possibly already won the unofficial ex-YU competition in the uniforms discipline.
Novak Djoković in tennis and men’s basketball, men’s water polo, and women’s volleyball squads get the most attention from the sporting fans. Meanwhile, the country’s first medal, gold in team shooting, has gone to Zorana Arunović and Damir Mikec.
- Montenegro (1 medal) swims with its water polo team, nicknamed the Sharks;
- North Macedonia (2 medals) gets on the mat with wrestler Vladimir Egorov; and
- Kosovo (3 medals) makes its third Olympics appearance, again leaning heavily into women’s judo where it has already won a silver and a bronze.
In medal-less Bosnia and Herzegovina, which only sent 5 athletes to Paris, all eyes are on the swimming phenom Lana Pudar, one of the most successful athletes in the country’s history.
Barcelona – Sarajevo
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona also feature prominently in the collective memory. The XXV Olympiad took place after the Bosnian War had broken out, and became the first Games where Bosnia and Herzegovina participated as an independent country.
Bosnia dominated the story lines in Barcelona. The city and the people of the host city and the 1992 Olympics Organizing Committee sent humanitarian aid to Sarajevo.
After the war ended, Barcelona assisted in reconstruction efforts in Sarajevo, financing more than 450 projects, including the Sarajevo Olympic Pavilion and the Olympic Village, totaling the equivalent of €2.3 million. Barcelona and Sarajevo became sister cities in 2000.
Barcelona native Juan Antonio Samaranch had developed a special relationship with the city during his term as the head of the International Olympic Committee, presiding over the Games in both Sarajevo and Barcelona. When he died in 2010, the grateful Sarajevo city renamed the Zetra Olympic Stadium to Juan Antonio Samaranch Olympic Hall.
The ten athletes from the independent, besieged country became symbols of peace and defiance in Barcelona.
Runner Mirsada Burić had trained in the streets of Sarajevo even as the siege got under way, with bombs and sniper bullets raining down on the city. She later survived imprisonment in the Rajlovac concentration camp and still holds the country’s records for 3,000 and 5,000 meter runs.
Swimmer Anja Margetić, who competed in butterfly disciplines in Barcelona 1992, is currently Deputy Mayor of Sarajevo. In this role she was active in the effort to renovate the Olympic bobsled and luge track at Mt. Trebević, envisaged as part of the joint Barcelona-Sarajevo bid for the 2030 Winter Olympics.
Though the project garnered support in both countries as well as across the Balkans, Spain’s Olympic Committee eventually withdrew the 2030 bid due to political conflicts among lower-level governments, which resembled those in Yugoslavia before the Sarajevo Games.
The 2030 Winter Olympics will again take place in France. Will French Alps 2030 and Salt Lake City Utah 2034 be followed by Barcelona-Sarajevo 2038?
It seems unlikely. If Sarajevo 1984 feels like a dream that did come true, Barcelona-Sarajevo has dissolved into reality.
The International Olympic Committee nowadays sees only 15 countries around the world as capable of staging Winter Games, having both 80 percent of needed facilities already in place and “a ‘climate-reliable’ outlook to host snow events in future decades.”
Switzerland seems to be the front runner for 2038, with the final decision to be made after 2025.
Kyiv – Gaza
The Olympic Truce seems forgotten amidst it all. It did not halt the fighting in Ukraine or Palestine, just as it did not halt fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Olympic dreams are only coming true at the sporting venues across France.
And we carry on with the Olympic spirit of participation and peace in our hearts.