At the European Indoor Championships 2017 in Belgrade, the Serbian national team members are going to have newly designed clothing and gear based on the idea of the athletes themselves and on the initiative of the European champion Ivana Španović in order to make the incoming spectacle in the Kombank Arena, 3-6 March, even more beautiful.

“It was a difficult task to choose only one solution among so many creative ideas of high quality we had received. After taking a lot of time to decide, the commission chose the idea of Nenad Dodlić,” said the head coach of the national team Slobodan Popović.

“I was so happy when I saw the competition for a creative solution of the national team clothing and gear because athletics is one of rare sports I enjoy watching. It was fun designing something so many people are going to see, and designing it for our own athletes was even better. Since I’m a graphic designer, I didn’t used to create clothing, so it was quite new for me. The new design is imagined as a balance between modern and traditional, in the colours of our flag of course, but with some other tones added on purpose. For example, blue is darker than usual and gold got a more prominent role than it used to have. It looks to me that our previous jerseys were too plain white, red and light blue, as if lacking character. So there are some heraldic elements from the coat-of-arms added, as well as more contemporary typography. My wish was to make everything more powerful – it is a battle after all, sports one, but still a battle. I hope that the athletes will love to wear it; as far as I’ve heard, they are satisfied and so am I,” Mr Dodlić pointed out.

“The whole atmosphere in the national team is special and I have no words to describe how we feel to see the European Championships being staged in Belgrade. The biggest wish of all members of the national team is to shine with results and rankings in front of the home audience and to do their best with the support of athletics fans. There is no greater honour than wearing the national team jersey; we wanted to think about all the details so we gave our suggestions for the new design. The chance was given to domestic designers to offer their solutions and be a part of this beautiful story,” said Ivana Španović.