Aleksandar Šapić

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]

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. He started his list will run without collaboration with political parties, and that he will participate in city government only as a mayor.[4] His list took third place with 9,09% (12 seats in the assembly).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

• Vanja Udovičić,
• Andrija Prlainović,
• Filip Filipović

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Aleksandar Šapić.

• Serbian Olympic Committee (in Serbian and English)
• VATERPOLO: Šapić "osušio" kapicu, MTS Mondo, 12 May 2009.
• Aleksandar Šapić on Twitter

Awards
Preceded by Roberto Calcaterra	Most Valuable Player of Water Polo World Championship 2005	Succeeded by Guillermo Molina