THIS YEAR'S ENTRY

Before the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, Croatia provided some of the more successful Yugoslav entries, including their only winner "Rock Me" performed by Riva in 1989. Consequently it was Zagreb in Croatia rather than Yugoslav capital Belgrade that staged the 1990 Eurovision Song Contest. Like their former Yugoslav neighbours Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia made their Eurovision debut in 1993 in Millstreet, soon after gaining independence. Croatia had a reasonably strong record in the Eurovision Song Contest until failing to qualify from the semi-final in 2007. Before that Croatia had performed in every Eurovision final achieving three Top 5 results. For the last two years, Croatia has broken the record of sending the contest's oldest ever performers to the event, however this year they have gone for some younger talent.

Croatian broadcaster HRT made a slight change to the rules of this year's Dora, their Eurovision selection show. In the semi-final, fourteen songs competed for six places in the final where they joined ten automatic finalists. The Croatian final was held on February 28th in the famous Crystal Ballroom of Hotel Kvarner in Opatija. The Croatian entry as chosen by a combination of a televote and a jury, but the song going to Moscow, one neither section as "Lijepa Tena" sung by Igor Cukrov, came second in bother elements of the voting. Since being chosen, the arrangement and credits on the entry have changed and now with the song being more of a duet, Andrea Šušnjara has been added to the billing.

24-year-old Igor Cukrov from Šibenik, whose family moved to Split when he was only two years old, had dreamt about becoming a priest at one period of his childhood. Today he is in the third year student of Theology in Split.

His performance at the Split Music Festival in 2007 with the song Duša Mi Je Bili Kamen was crucial for his decision to dedicate to singing. He also won the Best Debutant Award there. Igor sang the first tenor in the Dalmatian vocal ensemble Cambi. He plays several music instruments: guitar, piano, trumpet and clarinet and his favourite music genres are pop and rock. When he participated in the biggest regional competition, "Operacija Trijumf", he became the public’s favourite and went all the way to the finals.

Andrea Šušnjara was born 26 February 1987 in Split. At the age of three, she discovered music and since then she has had only one goal – to become a singer. Apart from regular elementary school, she went to music elementary music school where she had been practicing the piano for six years. She went to linguistic high school and solo singing lessons later on.

In 2004 she made her debut at the Dora with the song Noah, where she scored first in the semi-finals, while in the finals she placed second. The same year she debuted at the Split Music Festival with the song "Kad Zažmirim" and won the Best Debutant Award. In 2005 Andrea went to Dora with "Ljudi S Mora" finishing fourth.

The same year, Andrea made an aria and an introduction theme for the first Croatian soap opera "Villa Maria" and appeared in albums of foreign musicians: the group Bond and the Russian violoncellist Ksenija. Due to her regular education at the Faculty of Philosophy and the studies of opera singing, Andrea took a break from the Croatian music scene. However, Tonči Huljić invited her and she accepted to appear as a guest on "Lipeja Tena". Her charisma and vocal interpretation surely contributed to Igor Cukrov’s triumph at the Dora this year.

For husband and wife team of Tonči and Vjekoslava Huljić this will be a fourth time at Eurovision, having written the Croatian entries in 1995 ("Nostalgija"), 1999 ("Maria Magdalena") and 2001 ("Strings Of My Heart").

If you were to believe the bookmarkers, Croatia is one of the complete outsiders, although it is doing marginally better in internet polls. However with Croatia's ecellent qualification record it would not be a huge surprise to see it in the final.

BROADCASTER

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