Champion swimmer gets keys to apartment

Source: B92
BELGRADE -- Serbia's champion swimmer Milorad Čavić today received the keys to his news apartment in Belgrade.


This was another Fund B92 project, which brought together sponsors through a campaign dubbed, "Čavić for a neighbor".

The 84-sq meter apartment was purchased with the money gathered from the sponsors.

Fund B92 President and B92 Editor-in-Chief Veran Matić explained today that the fund wished to help all those “who wanted to enable this young man who came from the country of his birth to his homeland, to have a home and decent living and working conditions in his country”.

Matić reminded that B92 has had much success with connecting people with good intentions and those able to make a difference, and this time, the project began with the campaign promoted with a video clip.

Matić explained that the clip was broadcast several times in December 2008.

“Very quickly, we got to some donors who made it possible for us to give this 84 sq meter apartment, which was built five years ago, to Čavić to use for the rest of his life,” he said.

The B92 editor-in-chief added that the campaign received assistance from President Boris Tadić, who invested his authority in the bid to secure housing for the champion.

He also thanked donators from various companies that participated, and mentioned Simpo, the Serbian Building Directorate, Mladenovac Ceramics, Espana Ceramics, Polymit, Minotti, Sika and Eglo Lighting.

“Milorad himself said that the world record of Nađa Higl inspired him, and all of them together probably inspired the water polo players, while the water polo players inspired the basketball team,” Matić said in reference to a string of sporting victories achieved by Serbia's athletes last week.

“It is important to spread the positive vibe. I hope that we will continue with this gesture to spread this spirit of success and positive gestures, and that we will be able to create institutional conditions for the development of talent, professionals and amateurs, but to also create an infrastructure so that the results do not come a surprise,” Matić said.

He reminded that although everyone is ready to enjoy the victories and identify with them, when the results are not good, it is easy to forget all of the success that people previously identified with.

“We wanted to participate without any calculation in offering a positive message that work pays off, while in order to improve exceptional results, at least the elementary living and working conditions are necessary. We tried, together, to return a little to the exceptional person that is Milorad Čavić and award his expectional results,” Matić said.

B92 Sports Editor-in-Chief Zoran Panjković attended the ceremony today as well.

“From Dublin, when you first started visiting the winners’ stand, to Helsinki, Eindhoven, to Beijing, Rijeka and Rome," he addressed Čavić in a piece that aired on B92, "when you are in the water or outside in your shirt on the stand, and when you are hundreds of a second short, and the slow motion slows you down too much, and when you prove to Serbia that it is not impossible to be number one, and when you show the world Serbia's beautiful side, we are there… 92 hundredths of a second behind you. We want these keys to be yours a lot longer than the world record, and to help [Micheal] Phelps learn [Serbia's national anthem] ‘Bože Pravde.”

Čavić won his first European gold for Serbia in Dublin in 2003, when he set a new world record for the 100-meter butterfly race in 25-meter pools.

His successes followed with a silver in the 50-meter race in the same competition. Čavić defended his crown three years later in Helsinki, as well as in Debrecen in 2007 and Rijeka in 2008. Last year, he won another gold in the European Championships in Eindhoven.

He also took the Olympic silver in Beijing in the 100-meter butterfly race.

Last week at the Rome World Swimming Championships, Čavić won gold in the 50-meter race, and silver in the 100-meter butterfly.

In the past three months, Fund B92 has presented keys to end users in two other projects: the mobile mammography machine for the Institute of Oncology, which the fund gathered EUR 600,000 for, and the keys to the Safe House in Zrenjanin worth EUR 150,000, handed over to the Social Work Center there.