After winning the European Championship in 2007, the Euroleague in 2008 with CSKA, Russia has now also won the Eurovision Song Contest, the greatest music competition in the world as the organizers say. Is this all luck or is there a relation?

BallinEurope did some research and discovered that these successes are nothing about luck but some ingredients always come back in these wins. So Dima Bilan, originally from the Ciscaucasus region of Karachay, won the Eurovision Song Contest with the support of top American producer Timbaland. He had also former World, European and Olympic Champion Evgeny Plushenko and top Hungarian violinist Edvin Marton using an over 300-year-old Italian Stradivari in his Belgrade show. So that you know what I am talking about, here is “Believe,” the winning song by Dima Bilan.

Produced by an American, with Italian influence, former European champions, you see the point? J.R. Holden, the most American of all Russians, was present in both recent triumphs of Russian squads. Ettore Messina is the head coach of CSKA and David Blatt managed to win gold with the Russian National Team. And having some Greek blood in a club team has never been a negative when it comes to winning basketball titles these days.

Russia is known for the fact that you can buy everything with money. In both cases, only the best were good enough in order to bring the trophies back to Moscow. What has worked in basketball has now also worked in the Eurovision Song Contest.

But why am I talking about all this? Well, one of my all-time favorite players launched the telephone voting for the contest. Vlade Divac was present during the show to start the 15 minutes which decided the contest. Thank you, Vlade: You saved my evening after all the “performances” I had the chance to see during the show.

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