Eurovision 2003: Riga

The last contest to be held on a single night was also one of the tightest. Three songs finished within three points of each other, and the argument about who should have won carried on after the credits.

A host in difficulty

Latvian television worried from the start about paying for it. The government put in 5.3 million euros and the city of Riga another 1.1 million.

The trouble did not end there. In January 2003 a German news magazine reported that Riga’s finances were bad enough to threaten the contract. In March a Danish paper carried accusations from a senior EBU figure that the organisation was in chaos and Latvia might lose the contest. Latvian television denied both.

But production had fallen behind. The executive producer was dismissed and replaced, and help was brought in from Swedish and Estonian television. The postcards, showing the acts in the Latvian countryside, were filmed during contest week and ran so late that some were pieced together from rehearsal and press-conference footage.

What was new

Twenty-six countries took part, a record. Ukraine was added at the last minute and made its debut.

The stage had a video floor. The scoreboard, for the first time, re-sorted itself as each score came in, so that the leader was always at the top. And the presenters took greetings by satellite from Lys Assia, from Elton John, and from an astronaut and a cosmonaut on the International Space Station.

t.A.T.u.

Russia sent the pop duo t.A.T.u., and they arrived as favourites and behaved like it.

In a German tabloid they announced that they would win without doubt, and insulted the German singer. They turned up for rehearsals a day late, blaming a sore throat. At their press conference they complained about the lighting and the stage, and the journalists booed them.

The EBU, worried about what they might do on a live family show, at first planned to keep a recorded performance ready to cut to. It later said the broadcast would go out live and uninterrupted.

Sanomi

Belgium’s entry was sung in a language that does not exist. “Sanomi”, by the group Urban Trad, was the first song at the contest with not a word of English or of any language of the country it came from.

The bookmakers had it at 50 to 1.

The result

Turkey won, for the first time, 28 years after it first entered. Sertab Erener’s “Everyway That I Can” finished on 167 points.

Belgium had 165. Russia had 164.

Austria’s Alf Poier, a 100-to-1 shot whom the bookmakers had expected to finish last, came sixth.

Ireland’s jury

Russia complained. On the night Ireland’s telephone results had been delayed, and Irish television had fallen back on its stand-by jury. With three points between first and third, Russia’s broadcaster argued, that could have cost it the contest.

The EBU investigated and cleared the Irish. Then RTÉ published the public vote it had not used. Turkey would still have won. Russia had not received a single point from Irish viewers either — but Belgium would have had two points instead of ten, and so Russia would have finished second, not third.

Nul points

At the other end, the United Kingdom’s Jemini received no points at all. It was the worst result Britain had ever had.

It did not cost Britain its place. The Big Four could not be relegated, and in any case relegation was about to disappear. In January the EBU had announced what would replace it: from 2004, a semi-final.