Hrvoje Kačić (13 January 1932 – 14 February 2023) was a Croatian water polo player, legal scholar and politician.
Kačić was born in Dubrovnik on 13 January 1932.[1] At the age of 18, Kačić played for the Yugoslavia national water polo team at the 1950 European Water Polo Championship at which the team won bronze.[2] During the 1950s he became out of favour with Yugoslavia's communist regime and had his passport confiscated on three occasions.[2] He was jailed by the regime in 1952 which prevented him from joining the national team at the 1952 Summer Olympics.[2] He was also expelled from university.
Kačić competed with the national team at the 1956 Summer Olympics,[3] during which his friend and teammate Ivo Štakula defected to Australia.[2] In 1957, he was awarded the Sportske novosti Croatian Sportsman of the Year. At the 1959 Mediterranean Games he won a gold medal.[1] On the club level he was a long-time member of Croatian waterpolo club Jug from Dubrovnik, multiple national champion.
In 1956 he finished a degree in law.[4] He later finished a doctorate in law in 1965 at the University of Zagreb, specializing in maritime law.[5] Kačić also wrote about history.[6] He has collaborated with Ivo Pilar Institute of History.[7]
Kačić was elected to the Croatian Parliament for the first time in the country's first democratic elections in 1990 as an independent candidate.[8] From 1994 to 2001 he was president of the State Commission for Borders of the Republic of Croatia.[8]
In 1994 he received the Croatian Olympic Committee's Matija Ljubek Award.[9] He has served on the committee which gives out the Franjo Bučar State Award for Sport.[10] Kačić still actively supported Croatian water polo, retaining a position in the Croatian Water Polo Federation and supporting the national team.[11]
Kačić died in Zagreb, Croatia, on 14 February 2023, at the age of 91.[12][13]
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