Borislav Dević

Borislav Dević (Serbian Cyrillic: Борислав Девић, born 9 January 1963) is a Serbian retired track athlete and marathoner who specialized in various disciplines in middle-distance and long-distance races. He represented Yugoslavia at the 1996 Summer Olympics. His name on some results lists is sometimes cited as "Borisav".

Running career

Dević was born in Donje Biljane, a small village in Ravni Kotari. Growing up in Kninska Krajina, he first specialized in the 1500 metres. On October 10, 1983, he ran a 1500-metre race in Zadar running a time of 3:41.6 (min:sec)^[2] at the age of 19. He became one of the most competitive middle-distance track runners in all of SR Croatia and ran at the 1987 Summer Universiade in Zagreb. When Yugoslavia began to break up, he moved briefly to Sarajevo, but soon took refuge in Belgrade while his parents moved to live in the United States. Being without his parents or any close relatives in Belgrade, he was invited by Goran Raičević and his wife Jelena to live with them.^[3] He formed a very close friendship with Goran, and their training together lasted up to the time when Dević ran the men's marathon at the 1996 Summer Olympics, finishing in 49th place of 111 finishers with a time of 2:21:22.

After the end of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Dević moved to Australia. A Japanese movie director who was fascinated by Dević's life story and his friendship with Goran planned to make a documentary about Dević's career.^[3]

Notes

• ^1 Although Dević is of Serbian nationality, all of his results in international competition date before the Constitutional Charter of Serbia and Montenegro, so the country he represented in athletics is cited as SFR or FR Yugoslavia. Some of Dević's personal best results are maintained as Serbian results by Serbia's Athletic Association's all-time best lists.

References