SLOVENIA

Igor Mekina, AIM Ljubljana

For decades in Slovenia the Number One sport was skiing, as the sport that underlined the "distinction" and the "speciality" of the Slovenes. After such attitude to sports and speciality of the Slovene people came the independence, dissolution of the joint state and the period of the wars on the territory of former Yugoslavia.

The belief that "even the (sports) journalists helped in awakening of the spirit of militant nationalism" much less refers to Slovenia than to Serbia or Croatia. But, the editor of Ljubljana sports daily called Ekipa, for instance, in 1998 clearly gave an answer to the question why the semi-final game of European handball league between Slovenian Celje-Lasko brewery and Croatian Badel provoked an outburst of national passions among the audience. In his articles he unambiguously noted that in the game with the opponents from Zagreb "all means should be used"...

However, new political circumstances of the nineties and enormous need of Slovenian public for competitions and games with the sportsmen from the territory of the former "bigger homeland" finally brought about very interesting consequences. Collective sports gained in popularity again because of the latest success in football games - especially with the national team of FR Yugoslavia. The ethnic origin of the players which used to be so important does not matter any more.

The idea that caused great surprise when it was made public in the year 2000, nine years after dissolution of SFR Yugoslavia, was when the initiative was launched in Ljubljana about re-establishment of a joint, so-called Adriatic league in basketball. The initiative came at the moment when it became clear that nothing would come out of the dream that Union-Olimpija team could become part of the European league. The management of Union-Olimpija was aware that the initiative would not stand a chance if anybody recognised politics in it. That is why they persistently repeated that they were "not interested in politics", that they were interested only in "good teams which still mean something and which are successful in European competitions".

Perhaps time has come to start from the sports fans again, to gradually set things right and determine what was good and valuable, what we have in all the newly created states on the territory of former Yugoslavia in the wrath of quarrels and wars almost lost, smashed, contaminated and forgotten...