By Antonis Stroggylakis/ info@eurohoops.net
Newly crowned EuroBasket Women champion and tournament MVP Sonja Vasic will be one of the two flag bearers of Serbia in the opening ceremony of the 2021 Olympic Games, the Serbian Olympic Committee announced.
32-year-old Vasic becomes the first basketball player to receive this honor for the Serbian delegation (Radovan Radovic in 1960 and Drazen Dalipagic in 1984 were part of the Yugoslavian team while Dejan Bodigora in 2004 represented Serbia and Montenegro) and she will be joined by polo star and reigning Olympic champion Filip Filipovic. Last year, the International Olympic Committee had approved of a change in the protocol guidelines to allow one female and one male athlete from each country to jointly be flag bearers in the Opening Ceremony so that both genders could be represented.
The proposal that Vasic and Filipovic will be Serbia’s two flag bearers was brought on the table by the Serbian Olympic Committee Sports Commission and the motion was then accepted by the OC executive board.
Vasic is a two-time EuroBasket champion (2015, 2021) and Olympic bronze medalist (2016) with the Serbian national team. She has been voted as Serbian Female Player of the Year twice (2016, 2019).
On a club level, she has won the EuroLeague Women three times (2009, 2010 and 2015).
Photo: FIBA