With Mesud Pezer’s performance in the shot put in Paris, all Bosnian and Herzegovinian (BiH) athletes have concluded their competitions, and once again, BiH has not won a single medal.
They fought hard, undoubtedly giving every ounce of their strength to present themselves and their country in the best possible light, but success was once again elusive.
Everyone in BiH secretly hoped for the first-ever medal, but in the end, we did not see any athlete from BiH stand on the winners’ podium.
Do we even have the right to hope for anything?
Is it realistic, given the state of sports in BiH, which is struggling like a drowning person fighting for its last breath, to hope for any success at all? Can we even dream of any result when the system consistently fails day after day, year after year?
We like to say we are a sporting nation, but the only time the system, politics, and authorities want to engage with sports is when distributing “small money” in exchange for good PR. Exceptions occur when saving preparations, federations, clubs, and teams for major competitions serve a political purpose and when photographs are taken beside successful athletes who have almost bankrupted their families to nurture their dreams.
If we were a sporting nation, we would at least do approximately what neighboring countries do, gathering the best experts, and investing millions, yes, millions of BAM and euros in athletes, from the youngest to seniors, as Croatia and Serbia do. These two countries together already have five medals (Croatia three, Serbia two, with the unknown being the color of Novak Djokovic’s medal, who is playing the final today), and this is not a coincidence.
Ceric achieved the best placement
Experienced Larisa Ceric achieved a good result at the Olympics with a seventh-place finish in judo. Our judoka simply faced too strong competition, and seventh place, as she herself stated, is a good result, her best in her third Olympic participation.
Aleksandra Samardzic also fought valiantly. She concluded her debut Olympic appearance among the top 16 judokas in the 70 kg category and can be satisfied with her result. She will likely be at the next Olympic Games in four years if she continues in this manner.
Still young Lana Pudar has accustomed us to better performances, and despite her youth, she was the athlete we had the highest expectations for. However, this was not Lana’s competition. Her eliminations in the 100m butterfly and 200m butterfly came as a surprise. Lana, although the number of competitions won might not show it at first glance, is in a slight decline in form. When she won the European gold in Rome in 2022, she swam the 200m in 2:06.81. At the Paris Olympics, she finished 12th, swimming two seconds slower than her time in Rome.
Jovan Lekic competed only in the 400m freestyle and placed 30th out of 37 competitors. The young Banja Luka native probably could not have done better, but he has a bright future ahead of him, as he is only 20 years old.
Unlike the Tokyo Games, Mesud Pezer did not make it to the finals this time. In Tokyo, he was 11th with a throw of 20.08m, and three years later in Paris, it was more than a meter shorter, 19.03m. We will probably find out the reasons for this discrepancy when our athletes return to BiH.
