Aleksandar Šapić ( sr-cyrl, Александар Шапић; born 1 June 1978) is a Serbian politician, and former professional

water polo Water polo is a competitive team sport played in water between two teams of seven players each. The game consists of four quarters in which the teams attempt to score goals by throwing the ball into the opposing team's goal. The team with th ...

player serving as mayor of Belgrade since 20 June 2022. A member and current vice-president of the

Serbian Progressive Party The Serbian Progressive Party ( sr-cyrl, Српска напредна странка, Srpska napredna stranka, SNS) has been the ruling political party of Serbia since 2012. Founded by Tomislav Nikolić and Aleksandar Vučić in 2008 as a s ...

(SNS), Šapić had previously served as president of the New Belgrade municipality from 2012 to 2022. Šapić was previously a member of the Democratic Party (DS) until 2014, and he later led the

Serbian Patriotic Alliance The Serbian Patriotic Alliance ( sr-cyrl, Српски патриотски савез, Srpski patriotski savez, SPAS; ) was a right-wing populist and national-conservative political party in Serbia. It was led by Aleksandar Šapić. It was ...

until the merger into SNS which occurred in May 2021. 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.

Water polo career

Club 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. 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 The LEN Champions League is the top-tier European professional water polo club competition with teams from up to 18 countries. It is organized by the Ligue Européenne de Natation. The competition started in 1963 as European Cup. A change of nam ...

and twice LEN CUP. 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. He finished his professional water polo career in 2009. ;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 *National Championship of Yugoslavia Top Scorer (6): 1995–96, 1996–97, 1997–98, 1998–99, 1999–2000, 2000–01 *Serie A1 Top Scorer (5): 2001–02, 2002–03, 2003–04, 2004–05, 2005–06 *Russian Championship Top Scorer (3): 2006–07, 2007–08, 2008–09 *

LEN Champions League The LEN Champions League is the top-tier European professional water polo club competition with teams from up to 18 countries. It is organized by the Ligue Européenne de Natation. The competition started in 1963 as European Cup. A change of na ...

Top Scorer (2): 1999–2000, 2002–03 *

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a multi ...

Top Scorer (3): 2000 Sydney:2004 Athens : 2008 Beijing *Best Sportsman by OCS (1): 2004 *

World Championship A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, ...

MVP (1): 2005 Montreal *

Top Scorer (2):2003 Barcelona : 2005 Montreal * European Championship Top Scorer (3): 2003 Kranj, 2006 Belgrade, 2008 Málaga * World Cup Top Scorer (1): 2006 Budapest *Serbia's sport association "May Award" : 2008 ;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 ) , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 34000 to 34990 , area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side) , registration_plate = 34 , blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD , blank_i ...

– 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

four times and he went on to win three

Olympic medals An Olympic medal is awarded to successful competitors at one of the Olympic Games. There are three classes of medal to be won: gold, silver, and bronze, awarded to first, second, and third place, respectively. The granting of awards is lai ...

, bronze when representing

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label= Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavij ...

at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, silver for

Serbia and Montenegro Serbia and Montenegro ( sr, Cрбија и Црна Гора, translit=Srbija i Crna Gora) was a country in Southeast Europe located in the Balkans that existed from 1992 to 2006, following the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of ...

at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, and another bronze medal when playing for

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia ( Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hu ...

at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. 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 The European Championships is a multi-sport tournament which brings together the existing European Championships of some of the continent's leading sports every four years. The inaugural edition in 2018 was staged by the host cities of Berlin, ...

, four from the

World Championships A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, ...

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 * 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)

Post-retirement career

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.

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. 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 independent candidate. His list took third place with 9,09% (12 seats in the assembly).

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. 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. 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 Serbian, Russian, Italian, and English. Šapić has appeard in the 2004 Serbian film '' When I Grow Up, I'll Be a Kangaroo'', portraying the role of a local neighborhood heavy named Gangula. He took part in the humanitarian TV program '' Ples sa zvezdama'', a Serbian version of ''

Dancing with the Stars ''Dancing with the Stars'' is the name of various international television series based on the format of the British TV series '' Strictly Come Dancing'', which is distributed by BBC Studios, the commercial arm of the BBC. Currently the form ...

''.

References

*
VATERPOLO: Šapić "osušio" kapicu
MTS Mondo, 12 May 2009.

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sapic, Aleksandar 1978 births Living people Serbian people of Montenegrin descent Sportspeople from Belgrade Yugoslav male water polo players Serbia and Montenegro male water polo players Serbian male water polo players Water polo drivers Water polo players at the 1996 Summer Olympics Water polo players at the 2000 Summer Olympics Water polo players at the 2004 Summer Olympics Water polo players at the 2008 Summer Olympics Medalists at the 2000 Summer Olympics Medalists at the 2004 Summer Olympics Medalists at the 2008 Summer Olympics Olympic water polo players of Yugoslavia Olympic water polo players of Serbia and Montenegro Olympic bronze medalists for Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Olympic silver medalists for Serbia and Montenegro Olympic bronze medalists for Serbia in water polo World Aquatics Championships medalists in water polo European champions for Serbia and Montenegro European champions for Serbia Competitors at the 1997 Mediterranean Games Mediterranean Games medalists in water polo Mediterranean Games gold medalists for Yugoslavia Members of the National Assembly (Serbia) Mayors of Belgrade Democratic Party (Serbia) politicians Serbian Patriotic Alliance politicians Serbian Progressive Party politicians