Milena "Milka" Babović (27 October 1928 – 26 December 2020) was a Croatian sprint and hurdles runner and journalist.
She won numerous sprinting events in the former Yugoslavia, and was selected the best athlete several times. She also had a noted career as a sports journalist and editor in television.
Life
Babović was born in Skopje to a Montenegrin father and a SyrmianGerman (Danube Swabian) mother, and grew up in Sarajevo, but moved to Ruma and Belgrade in high school. She graduated in pedagogy at the University of Zagreb.[2][3] Having taken up sports in Ruma, she joined Mladost in Zagreb and started to compete in sprinting events. Starting in 1953, she won the Yugoslav national titles in the 100 m (once), 80 m hurdles (seven), 4 × 100 m relay (seven), and 4 × 200 m relay events (two). She set several Yugoslav sprinting records, and won two international student competitions in the 80 m hurdles in 1953 and 1957; at the 1954 European Championships she placed fifth.[2] In the Sportske novosti awards polling, she was voted the best female athlete in Croatia three times and was twice the best female athlete of Yugoslavia.[2]
She worked as a sports journalist for Narodni sport since 1949, and moved to TV Zagreb in 1957 where she became the first sports editor. She served in that position, barring one four-year interruption, until 1975. She was a multiple-time president of the sport journalist section of the Croatian Journalist Association, served as a member of the Yugoslav Olympic Committee in two mandates, and was a one-time member of the Executive Council of the Assembly of the City of Zagreb.[2]
Babović was decorated with awards from the Journalist Association in 1974, the City of Zagreb in 1977, and the Yugoslav Order of Brotherhood and Unity with a silver wreath in 1979.[2] She died on 26 December 2020, from the effects of COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic in Croatia.[4]
