20 years of the Croatian Olympic Committee
(1991 - 2011)
Split, 16 November 1948 – Pula, 29 July 2008
M
ate Parlov, Olympic Light Heavyweight Champion from the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, was one of Croatia’s boxing greats and the most decorated Croatian boxer of all time. He also participated in the 1968 Olympic Games in Ciudad de Mexico, where he reached the middleweight quarter-final. His third Olympic Games were the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, but he was there as the coach of the Yugoslav boxing team who won one gold, one silver and two bronze medals. He was defeated in only 13 of his 310 bouts as amateur. He won the World Amateur Champion title at the 1st World Championships held in Havana, Cuba, in 1974. He was also the two-time European Champion (Madrid 1971 and Belgrade 1973), eighttime Yugoslav Light Heavyweight Champion (1967
Mate Parlov
218
– 1974) and five-time Balkan Champion (1971 - 1974). In his professional career, he was the European Light Heavyweight Champion in 1976 and also the WBC World Champion in 1987. Of his 29 professional bouts, he won 24, lost three bouts and two ended in a tie. After the end of his active career as a boxer, he lived in Fažana near the city of Pula, away from sport. He was an occasional guest commentator for the bouts of Croatia’s top boxers Željko Mavrović and Stipe Drviš on Croatian National Television. The Sportske Novosti daily sports newspaper poll voted him Yugoslavia’s best athlete three times, in 1971, 1972 and 1974, and Croatian National Television poll voted him Croatia’s athlete of the century in 2000.