Professor Doctor Milorad Dokmanac – Parliamentary Laureate

On May 31, in the Parliament of Serbia, Milorad Dokmanac was presented with the biggest social and sports award of the Sports Federation of Serbia- The MAY AWARD for LIFE’S WORK. The award was presented by the Minister of Sports, Zoran Gajić, and the President of the Sports Federation of Serbia, Davor Štefanek. This great recognition has even more weight because it was presented by Božidar

Maljković, President of the Olympic Committee of Serbia.

Dokmanac said, I owe a big thank you to everyone who recognized my work and awarded me this flattering award. Gratitude also goes to all my colleagues, people in the Federation, first of all to Željko Trajković, but most of all to my wrestlers who fought hard for all the trophies at the professional level. Dokmanac, who is also a doctor of science in sports, is celebrating a big anniversary this year – 50 years of coaching experience.

For five full decades in the wrestling sport, he was active as a competitor for 17 years, played 412 matches, was the national youth champion, as well as a youth and senior national team member. Since 1989, he has been coaching at the national level, and since 2004 he has been the selector of the senior national team of Serbia, that is, of all national selections in all three wrestling styles.That the prize went into the right hands is best shown by the numerous trophies, and therefore the importance that Dokmanac had on the development of wrestling in Serbia. In the 33 years he worked as a club coach in Slatina, Radnički from Sombor, Spartak Subotica and Prozivka from Subotica, he and his wrestlers won 275 medals and as many as 21 national team championship titles.

Also, in more than three decades of work as a coach and selector of the national team, our wrestlers have won 51 senior medals, out of 116 in the history of our country. In the younger categories, in the era of Milorad Dokmanac, 38 out of a total of 53 awards in the history of Serbian wrestling were won.

Only at the last two senior world championships, 10 medals were won, of which even five were gold, which is a historic result, which placed Serbia among the world’s wrestling superpowers.

“Behind all this is a lot of work, work and only work. For the past 20 years that I have been the selector of our senior national team, I have been dedicated to work for 10 to 12 hours every day. All vacations have been spent on wrestling. This without the great understanding of my wife Vesna and son Slaven, who are my biggest support, it would absolutely not be possible to achieve such results. I had peace and stability in my family, so I could put all of myself into wrestling. That’s the only way we could reach the top,” added Dokmanac.

He also recalled the beginnings of his work as a selector for national teams, when wrestling in Serbia was in an unenviable situation. “When I think back to that year in 2004, we were at absolute zero, practically on the brink. But, we managed to build something. The first eight years were very difficult, because we encountered a lot of misunderstanding and subterfuge. However, Željko Trajković and I we had concrete plans and a strategy, which we firmly adhered to and from which we did not deviate even in the most difficult moments. And then, with a lot of effort and work, everything went the way we wanted was the great enthusiasm of our wrestlers, first of all Štefanek, Fris and Maksimović, who started this wrestling fairy tale, and all that was continued by the Nemeš brothers, and then by the others,” said Dokmanac.

“The key moment happened in 2004, when Željko Trajković was the president of the Expert Commission, and Nenad Lalović was the president of the Wrestling Federation of the then Union of Serbia and Montenegro. In competition with Sreten Damjanović, Ivica Frgić and Goran Kasum, our great champions, the Management Board decided to put their trust in me and appoint me as the coach of the senior national team as a young expert. At the same time, I worked on professional training, a master’s degree, and then a doctorate,” added the coach of the Serbian wrestling team.

“My doctoral dissertation was taken over by the World Wrestling Federation and almost 40 percent was implemented in the future work of the World Wrestling Federation in the organization of major championships. We gathered significant people around us and with great energy and effort set out to lay some new foundations. That’s how we reached 51 senior medals at the OI, WC and EP, which is a truly superb result in the last two world championships, ” said Dokmanac.

There will be five wrestlers in the Serbian Olympic team in Paris this summer. “Since the disintegration of the SFRY, we have never had so many Olympians at any Games. That number is an important prerequisite in order to fight for medals. For example, in London in 2012, there were Aleksandar Maksimović and myself.”