The History of the Plitvice Marathon (Part 1)

Who has not heard of the Plitvice Lakes before? Who has not experienced this wonder of nature and the magic of Plitvice in one way or another? The park that includes 16 lakes, a number of waterfalls, rivers and creeks and vast forest and glade areas. Every season gives all this beauty its own unique touch. Spring and summer turn everything green and draw the eyes to the waters and the power of the waterfalls. Autumn paints the leaves of the Park’s infinite forests hundreds of vibrant colours, endowing them with a singular beauty. Winter dresses the Park in snowy white, often covering it with up to a meter of snow and freezing its lakes and waterfalls. The Plitvice Lakes enthral and mesmerize every visitor.

Why had I first come to the National Park Plitvice Lakes?

As a Phys Ed teacher, a sports and recreation animator, skiing instructor and an outdoor sports buff, I was drawn to the new professional challenge by the opportunity to work with people that presented itself to me way back in 1981.

The newly built gym, outdoor sports courses, hiking and running trails along lakes and waterfalls, rowing at the lakes, bike tours of the Park, skiing and the skiing school in winter, and ski walking/running opened up immense opportunities for recreation and competition for the Park’s visitors and employees, the locals, school kids, sports societies and clubs.

One of my priorities had been to introduce running buffs to the trails along the lakes and waterfalls (the narrow Park zone). Outdoor running was already becoming widely popular at the time. Hundreds of thousands of people of all ages and in all corners of the globe were running in parks, city
streets, and forests, and I felt the Plitvice area was a perfect location for it.

I had only worked at Plitvice for five months when the Park management gave me the green light to organise a running event in this setting of breath-taking nature.

Thanks to the members of the Athletic Club Veteran from Zagreb (Nino Vedriš, Boris Stepinac, Joško Murat), who promoted the event and provided help with its organisation, we set about organising the event in Plitvice.

And so the Plitvice Marathon was “born” on 18 October 1981. A glorious, sunny autumn day, the riot of colours of the Plitvice forests and 165 runners at the start line in the men’s and the women’s race made the joy of the first Plitvice Marathon even greater.

The Plitvice Lakes National Park, which organised the event, the sponsor Vikend weekly (I would like to extend my special thanks to journalist Mirjana Gračan) from Zagreb and several other sponsors all made their own contributions to making the 1st Plitvice Marathon a success and an amazing experience for the outdoor running buffs who took part in it.

The only Croatian sports daily Sportske novosti also made a significant contribution to popularising the Marathon and other activities at the Park with its announcement and stories, and often secured prizes for the best runner as one of the sponsor of the event. Janko Goleš takes most of the credit for this work in the beginning, and Duško Popović, Dinko Jakić, Mario Zorko, Ivanka Ožbolt, and nowadays Toma Dragičević and Kristina Dominković, picked up where he left off.

Žarko Susić supported the Plitvice Marathon for years, writing announcements, actively participating in the event as a referee, and making suggestions and remarks to the organisers. His stories and reviews of the marathon, in which he criticised the errors and complimented on successes, played a very important role. Mr. Susić is a doyen of sports journalism, who covered 15 Olympics and 22 Plitvice Marathons for the Croatian public.

The Second Channel of the Croatian Radio with Karlo Šetka at the helm covered the Plitvice Marathon and aired stories about it for years. Their contribution to the development and advancement of the Marathon was invaluable.

Croatian Television, still called Television Zagreb at the time, also sent Milka Babović to cover the 1st Plitvice Marathon. Ms. Babović and her crew covered the event in great detail and presented the material they filmed to the general public in a story that lasted for several minutes. The story was of paramount importance for the Marathon’s future.

There had been 165 runners in the men’s and women’s races at the start line of the 1st Plitvice Marathon (which had been a marathon only in name, as it lacked a proper 42.195 m marathon route), competing on a 12 km and a 24.5 km route. If my memory serves me correctly, Štefica Bauman from Koprivnica was the first winner of the women’s race, and Milan Mandić from Rijeka the first winner of the men’s race.

In early October 1982, 276 runners showed up at the start line of the Plitvice Race (10 and 21 km routes) in spite of the restrictions that the then authorities had placed on the use of cars and consumption of fuel. Veseljka Klobučarić (Zagreb) was the winner of the women’s race, and Marijan Krempl (Slovenia) the winner of the men’s race on the half-marathon route.

The famous Croatian track-and-field athlete and marathon runner Franjo Mihalić, the winner of the silver medal in marathon at the Olympics in Melbourne 1956 and the winner of marathons in Boston, London, Moscow, Milan, Tokyo and elsewhere, had been one of the runners.

After the first mass outdoor race was introduced, the organisers started thinking about including a 42.195 m marathon race like other countries in Croatia’s surroundings and elsewhere in Europe into the programme. The trails around the lakes and the waterfalls were long enough to allow it.

As early as 2 October 1983, the Plitvice Lakes National Park promoted its MARATHON in the true sense of the word. In addition to the marathon race as the main event, the programme also included a half-marathon and a 10 km recreational race. The total number of runners on the start lines for all three races came close to 400, which had been an impressive number considering the circumstances at the time. It was significant that the marathon route passed by most lakes and waterfalls, densely forested areas and Bijela and Crna rijeka rivers, which gave the runners and extra boost and drove them to strive for even better results.

The third Plitvice Marathon was interesting, among other things, because the Athletic Association of Croatia (as it was called at the time) appointed Plitvice the organiser of the national championship – the 1st Women’s Championship and the 3rd Men’s Championship.

The winners of the national championship and the Plitvice Marathon were: Veseljka Klobučarić from Zagreb (3:47:01) in the women’s race and Mladen Pepelko from Varazdin (2:33:01) in the men’s race. Slavica Ivanić from Pula (1:30:03) and Damir Černić from Osijek (1:11:40) were the winners of the half-marathon.

In the years to come, the Plitvice Marathon became a mandatory destination for runners from across Croatia, and foreign runners toughened up the competition for the prizes provided by the organiser and a growing number of sponsors.

The Plitvice Lakes area indeed has a very specific microclimate, a result of the bodies of water and extensive forests in the area, with occasional very bad weather. It thus happened that some 500 runners on all three routes on the 4th Plitvice Marathon on 7 October 1984 faced cold and rainy weather with heavy north winds, and such occurrences were occasionally repeated in later years too. Only the men ran the longest race. Svetlin Vujasin from Ljubljana (2:41:52) proved the best at adapting to the adverse circumstances, finishing the race ahead of Ivica Habuš from Zagreb (2:50:22).

The number of foreign runners started to increase dramatically from the 5th Plitvice Marathon in 1985. Most of them came from Germany, Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia and other countries. Terezija Filipič from Ljubljana (3:54:36) was the winner of the women’s race that year ahead of Božena
Žatecka from Czechoslovakia, and Ivica Habuš (2:49:01) was the winner of the men’s race.

The 5th Marathon was remembered by an interesting occurrence. Duško Radojević, a marathon runner from Sarajevo, had been convincingly in the lead ahead of the second best (around 8 minutes) up until some 250 metres before the finish line, when exhaustion got the better of him and he first
started walking, and then stumbling to the left and right. The spectators cheered for him to hold on to the finish line and kept him from veering off the route until his coach came running. However, in spite of all the coach’s efforts to help Radojević cross the finish line on his own, Radojević was only able to cross it with the coach’s help. He finished the race as the first (2:48:38), but the rules are clear and he was disqualified. Many of the spectators applauded him for a long time, and the organiser presented him with a special prize.

A Slovenian runner won the 6th Plitvice Marathon too, but with a much better result (3:23:08), and Jan Madaj from Czechoslovakia (2:32:37) was the first foreign winner. More than 800 runners competed in the marathon on all three routes.

The 7th Plitvice Marathon produced new winners. Nataša Jugović from Sarajevo (2:57:45) was the winner in the women’s race, and Sreten Perić from Pančevo (2:26:22) in the men’s race. The increasing number of runners from abroad resulted in increasingly fierce competition and an increased number of victories of foreign runners.

Peter Markovich from Hungary (2:26:37) was thus the winner of the 8th edition of the Plitvice Marathon, and the Croatian marathon runner from Slavonski Brod Stojanka Gudalović (3:18:39) was the winner of the women’s race ahead of marathon runners from Germany, Great Britain and Slovenia. An interesting bit of trivia worth mentioning: Marijana Letica from Makarska, who was running the women’s race on the marathon route that year, was only 11 (eleven) years old. I will leave it to the readers to judge if little Marijana’s parents had been right to send her to the most challenging marathon route in Croatia, which she finished in somewhat under four hours.

Next year, 1989, and the 9th Plitvice Marathon were remembered by a considerable number of runners from abroad, mostly from Germany, Italy and Hungary. Croatian runners were the most numerous, as usual, and they arrived from all Croatian regions. Mirjana Handžak from Zagreb (3:19:41) was the winner of the women’s race, and the 1987 winner Sreten Perić from Serbia (2:29:13) was the winner of the men’s race again.

Considering the interest in the Plitvice Marathon in Croatia and abroad, its participants were right to expect a worthy celebration of its 10th anniversary and a glorious 10th marathon. Preparations were under way, but to the regret of us all, it was already clear in 1990 that unfortunate events were in the works, and that the 10th anniversary of the Marathon would not be observed as planned. The number of runners at the start line was much lower than in previous years, and Branko Pecik from Zagreb (2:35:56) won the men’s race ahead of much fewer competitors. Tončka Ločičnik from Slovenia and Branko Bošković from Vrginmost were the most successful on the 21 km route.

The Croatian War of Independence and the occupation of the Plitvice Lakes interrupted the tradition of holding the Marathon for a period of five years.

* The story about the Plitvice Marathon from 1995 to 2005 will continue in the next issue.

** The author of the article is the author of the idea about the Plitvice Marathon. Considering that almost all documentation for the period 1981 – 1990 was lost in the war, the author kindly asks everyone who knows something about the Marathon in this period or has materials about it to contact him on the email address or the phone 091 7322437.

Thank you in advance.