Aleksandar Šapić

Aleksandar Šapić (Serbian Cyrillic: Александар Шапић; born 1 June 1978) is a Serbian politician and former professional water polo player. Since 2012, he has served as the president of the New Belgrade municipality.[1]

MP

Aleksandar Šapić
Александар Шапић
President of the New Belgrade Municipality
Assumed office
27 June 2012
Preceded byNenad Milenković
Personal details
Born (1978-06-01) 1 June 1978
Belgrade, SFR Yugoslavia
Political partySPAS (2018 – present)
Other political
affiliations
  • DS (2006 – 2014)
  • Independent (2014 – 2018)
Spouse(s)Milica
ChildrenMaksim, Fedor
Alma materMegatrend University
OccupationPolitician, athlete, actor
Medal record
Men's water polo
Representing  FR Yugoslavia,
 Serbia and Montenegro
and  Serbia
Olympic Games
2004 Athens
2000 Sydney
2008 Beijing
World Championship
2005 Montreal
2001 Fukuoka
1998 Perth
2003 Barcelona
European Championship
2001 Budapest
2003 Kranj
2006 Belgrade
1997 Seville
2008 Málaga
FINA World League
2005 Belgrade
2006 Athens
2007 Berlin
2008 Genova
2004 Long Beach
FINA World Cup
2006 Budapest
2002 Belgrade
Mediterranean Games
1997 Bari

During his professional water polo career, he played for two Olympic bronze medal squads, one for FR Yugoslavia at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, the other for Serbia at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, and one Olympic silver medal squad for Serbia and Montenegro at the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

Education

He graduated from the Megatrend University Faculty for Management in 2003, received his master's degree in 2009 and tried to defend his Ph.D. dissertation in 2012, in the field of industrial management. His doctoral thesis has gained public attention in 2014, when a number of experts claimed that it contained plagiarized parts. [2]

Political career

He was the assistant of the Mayor from 2009 to 2012. He was elected the president of New Belgrade municipality in 2012 and he was reelected in 2016. He is still the president of the biggest municipality in Belgrade.[3] He ran in the Belgrade Assembly elections in 2018, as a mayoral candidate. Šapić stated that he is not interested in pre-election coalitions, and that he will compete alone, as an independant candidate. [4] His list took third place with 9,09% (12 seats in the assembly).

Water polo career

He started playing water polo in 1984, in WC Crvena Zvezda where he played for all young categories teams. He transferred to WC Partizan in 1991, not yet fourteen he made his senior debut in 1992. He returned to WC Crvena Zvezda in 1993 and he continued his career in WC Bečej starting 1994. In 2001, he moved to Italy, WC Camogli, where he spent three seasons, and after that, he transferred to WC Rari Nantes Savona. He left Italy in 2006 when he went to Russian water polo club Shturm 2002 where he signed a contract that made him the best-paid player in water polo history.[5]

During his brilliant club career, he won 21 trophies of which 9 National Championship (6 he won in SRY, 2 in Russia and 1 in Italy). He also won National Cups 9 times (7 National Cups of SRY and 2 National Cups of Russia). He once won LEN Euroleague and twice LEN CUP.[6]

In the period 1996–2009 he was the leagues' top scorer fourteen times in a row, 6 times in SRY, 5 times in Italy, and 3 times in Russia. During his club career he scored 1.694 goals, most of the number 924 he scored for clubs in SRY, in Italian league he scored 494 times and in Russia 276 times.[7]

He finished his professional water polo career in 2009.

Clubs

Club titles (21)
  • 9 National Championships – 6 SRY, 2 Russia, 1 Italy
  • 9 National Cups- 7 SRY, 2 Russia
  • 2 LEN Cups
  • 1 LEN Euroleague

14 consecutive top-scorer titles 1996–2009
  • 6 times in SRY league
  • 5 times in Italian league
  • 3 times in Russian league

Number of scored goals
  • SRY (Crvena zvezda, Becej) – 924
  • Italy (Camogli, Rari Nantes Savona) – 494
  • Russia (Shturm 2002) – 276

National team career

Šapić made his debut for the national team of Yugoslavia in December 1995 when he was only seventeen, and played for them until 2008. At the very start of his national team career, Yugoslavia won two European U19 championships – 1995 in Esslingen and 1996 in Istanbul – and Šapić was the best player and top scorer in both.

He took part in his first major competition at the age of eighteen, the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. He would play for the national team in the Olympic Games four times and he went on to win three Olympic medals, bronze when representing Yugoslavia at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, silver for Serbia and Montenegro at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, and another bronze medal when playing for Serbia at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.[8]

With the national team of Yugoslavia, later Serbia and Montenegro, and finally Serbia, he played in 22 sports tournaments overall, winning a total of 20 medals, five of which were from the European Championships, four from the World Championships and three from the Olympic Games. He won two medals in the World Cup, five in World League tournaments, and he won a gold medal in the 1997 Mediterranean Games in Bari.

Šapić scored 981 goals in 385 games that he played for the national team. He was twice top scorer in the Olympic Games. Šapić ranks third on the all-time scoring list in Olympic history, with 64 goals. He was four times top scorer of both the World Championship and the European Championship. He was also four times the top scorer of the World League tournaments and he won the title of top scorer twice in the World Cup.

During his national team career, the team was named "ideal team" eight times in the tournaments that he played in, three times in both the World and European Championships, and twice in the Olympic Games.

World Championship
  • 1998 – bronze medal – top scorer – ideal team
  • 2001 – silver medal – top scorer – ideal team
  • 2003 – bronze medal – top scorer
  • 2005 – gold medal – MVP and top scorer – ideal team
  • 2007 – 4th place

European Championship
  • 1997 – silver medal
  • 2001 – gold medal – top scorer – ideal team
  • 2003 – gold medal – MVP – ideal team
  • 2006 – gold medal – top scorer – ideal team
  • 2008 – silver medal – top scorer

Olympic Games
  • 1996 – 8th place
  • 2000 – bronze medal – top scorer – ideal team
  • 2004 – silver medal – top scorer – ideal team
  • 2008 – bronze medal

World League
  • 2004 – silver medal – top scorer
  • 2005 – gold medal – top scorer
  • 2006 – gold medal
  • 2007 – gold medal – top scorer
  • 2008 – gold medal – top scorer

World Cup
  • 2002 – bronze medal – top scorer
  • 2006 – gold medal – top scorer

Mediterranean Games
  • 1997 – gold medal

Number of scored goals
  • National team (SRY, SMne, Serbia) – 981[9]
  • Number of goals scored in career – 2675

Top scorer
  • 2 times top scorer Olympic Games
  • 4 times top scorer European Championship
  • 4 times top scorer World League
  • 2 times top scorer World Cup

Ideal team
  • 8 times chosen in ideal team (OG, WC, EC)

Sports organizations

Besides his full of trophies water polo career, he gave his contribution to Serbian sport through engagement in sports organizations. He was the president of the water polo club Crvena zvezda from 2003 to 2004.

After finishing his career as a player in Italian club Rari Nantes Savona for the club he continued working as a sports manager for European competitions in the period 2006–2014.

Charity work

He is the founder of a humanitarian foundation –Be Humane that is founded in 2014, and it started working in June, 2014. Be Humane raises funds in order to help children, adults, institutions and organizations from Serbia. Be Humane in a very short time became one of the most relevant and most trusted humanitarian foundations in the region and its aim is to help to cure and ensuring needed therapy for children at the first place.[10]

Since it was founded until today, with the help of Be Humane more than 1 million euros was raised. Thanks to that great number of users' help were supplied with therapy and send to proper medical treatment. In February 2016 Aleksandar Šapić donated all the medals he won in his water polo career and they are being sold in auction, money raised in this humane action will be donated for curing and therapies of Be Humane users.[11]

He received numerous awards for community service and humanitarian work. With those awards, many institutions in Serbia showed respect and gratitude to him for everything he did in the field of humanitarian work as an active sportsman and he continued doing, even in a more intense and responsible way, after he is retired from water polo.

Personal life

Šapić is married and a father of two sons. He lives and works in Belgrade. He speaks Russian, Italian, and English.

Šapić has portrayed Gangula in the 2004 Serbian film When I Grow Up, I'll Be a Kangaroo.[12] He took part in the humanitarian TV program Ples sa zvezdama, a Serbian version of Dancing with the Stars.

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See also

References
  1. "Aleksandar Šapić". Istinomer. Retrieved 2 June 2017.
  2. "Shameless plagiarism of Aleksandar Šapić". Balkanist.net. Retrieved 2 April 2020.
  3. "Predsednik opštine". Gradska opština Novi Beograd (in Serbian). Retrieved 2 June 2017.
  4. "Šapić: Na izbore idem samostalno (in Serbian)".
  5. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 15 April 2006. Retrieved 11 April 2006.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  6. http://arhiva.kurir-info.rs/Arhiva/2005/april/23-24/SP-01-23042005.shtml
  7. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 4 September 2012. Retrieved 26 January 2010.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  8. "Aleksandar Šapić". Sports reference. Archived from the original on 18 April 2020. Retrieved 7 June 2017.
  9. Šapić kandidat za igrača decenije; B92, 25 January 2010.
  10. "Oficial cite". Humanitarian Foundation "Budi human – Aleksandar Šapić". Retrieved 2 June 2017.
  11. "Aleksandar Šapić igra da drugi pobijede". Aljazzera Balkans (in Serbian). Retrieved 2 June 2017.
  12. "Aleksandar Sapic". IMDb. Retrieved 7 June 2017.
Awards
Preceded by
Roberto Calcaterra		 Most Valuable Player of
Water Polo World Championship
2005		 Succeeded by
Guillermo Molina
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