Personal information | |||||||||||||
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Born |
Nádalja, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary (now Nadalj, Serbia) |
14 October 1872||||||||||||
Died | 10 January 1949 Pula, SR Croatia, SFR Yugoslavia (now Pula, Croatia) |
(aged 76)||||||||||||
Sport | |||||||||||||
Country | Hungary | ||||||||||||
Sport | Tennis, weightlifting, wrestling | ||||||||||||
Medal record
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Updated on 1 October 2013. |
Momčilo Tapavica (Serbian Cyrillic: Момчило Тапавица; Hungarian: Tapavicza Momcsilló, pronounced [ˈtɒpɒvit͡sɒ ˈmomt͡ʃilːoː]; 14 October 1872 – 10 January 1949) was an all-around sportsperson, competing in tennis, weightlifting, wrestling, achieving his best result in tennis by winning the singles bronze medal at the 1896 Summer Olympics. After his sporting career Tapavica became a well-known architect.
Tapavica, an ethnic Serbian, was born in Nádalja, Kingdom of Hungary (now Nadalj, Serbia) in 1872. He began to practise sports in Újvidék (Novi Sad), continuing his training in Budapest, where he studied architecture and civil engineering at the Technical College. He soon excelled with his performances and was selected in the Hungarian team for the first Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, where he competed in tennis, weightlifting and wrestling.
At the 1896 Summer Olympics, Tapavica, being the lone tennis player in Hungary's Olympic Team, won the bronze medal in the singles tennis tournament. In the first round, he defeated D. Frangopoulos of Greece. The second round gave him a bye, subsequently Dionysios Kasdaglis of Egypt beat Tapavica in the semifinal, and with no playoff for third place he shared bronze medal honors with Greek Konstantinos Paspatis. Tapavica was the first ethnic Serb to win an Olympic medal, as well as the first – and to date the only – Hungarian to win a medal in tennis at the Olympic Games. He did not compete in the doubles tournament.