Four decades ago, 1.510 athletes from 49 different countries gathered in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), which at the time was part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), and was hosting the 14th Winter Olympic Games (WOI).
Yugoslav collective effort
When Yugoslavia was chosen to host the WOI in 1984, expectations were high.
Yugoslavs were ecstatic and were keen to get their country ready to shine. The infrastructure for the competitions was built in less than six years, quicker than any other Olympic construction work had been completed before.
Previous Olympic Games ended with financial deficits, posing significant difficulties for the host cities. But Yugoslavia was able to raise extra funding from an apparently willing source: the general public.
“Each one of us participated in the construction through donations from each salary”, says Munevera Begic, who is 79 years old today, and adds that “that was the law and no one had anything against it”.
Vucko, the cheerful mascot
Before the Olympics, the public broadcasting network was used to appeal to Yugoslav artists to participate in a competition to create the mascot for the games.
Joze Trobec, painter, caricaturist, and designer from Slovenia, was among those who noticed the competition call back in 1981.
He noted that many previous Olympics had cartoon animals for mascots. Moscow had Misha the Bear in 1980, while Montreal had Amik the Beaver in 1976.
“That’s when I started thinking about what would be good, what would symbolize both the sporting games and perhaps Sarajevo, and perhaps BiH,” says Trobec.
“And I remembered that as a boy I read stories about wolves, about BiH, about Jahorina, so the idea came to me that maybe a wolf would be good to make as a mascot,” he adds.
The smiling mascot was named Vucko – Wolfie or Little Wolf. Back in February 1984, the New York Times wrote that “the cheerful, wolfish face of the Olympic mascot, Vucko… may leave its own legacy” in BiH.
Forty years later, pictures of Vucko can still be seen on posters placed on the walls of restaurants and cafes around Sarajevo, there are souvenirs in the shape of Vucko, and even graffiti with his image.
In today’s divided society, Vucko is “the only thing that all Bosnians can agree on,” Trobec points out, Detektor reports.
E.Dz.
