Zagreb, the capital city of Croatia, hosted the fifth World
Synchronized Skating Championships from April 1 to 4, 2004,
with over 550 skaters from 23 teams and 18 countries of the
European, American, Asian, Australian and African continents.
This took place only six years and three months i.e. 75 months
after our club was founded.
The World Championships were held in Minneapolis, USA in
2000, Helsinki, Finland in 2001, Rouen, France in 2002,
Ottawa, Canada in 2003, and will be held in Goteborg, Sweden
in 2005 and Prague, The Czech Republic in 2006. Croatia
was the fifth country entrusted by the International Skating
Union to host the world championships in a sport symbolized
by closeness, team spirit, seriousness and sacrifice, mutual
respect and encouragement, a sport with no opponents, one
which creates many friendships and brings young people,
countries, cultures and continents together in the most
beautiful way.
Zagreb is the cradle of Croatian sport. It is the hometown
of three-time Olympic gold medallist from Salt Lake City,
2002, the queen of skiing, Janica Kostelić. Zagreb is also
the hometown of Sanda Dubravčić-Šimunjak, the 1981 European
figure skating silver-medallist, an athlete who was honored
with lighting the Olympic torch at the Winter Olympic Games
in Sarajevo two decades ago. Zagreb, with its long tradition
of the "Golden Spin," hosted the European Figure
Skating Championships in 1974 and 1979, and the World Junior
Figure Skating Championships in 1998.
Thanks to its skating enthusiasts and wonderful people at
the ISU, Zagreb, a city in a country with only two indoor
ice rinks and only one synchronized skating club, quickly
grew into one of the world centers of this beautiful sport.
Our organizing abilities were recognized even at the early
and difficult stages, and so was the warmth of the citizens
of our historic 910-year-old city, which has always been a
part of the Western European and Central European cultural
circle.
That is exactly the reason why Zagreb entered history as
the first city to host the unofficial world synchronized
skating championships for juniors (the 2002 World Challenge
Cup) and the World Synchronized Skating Championships for
seniors. It was right here in Zagreb that synchronized skating
celebrated its first 50 years since its beginnings in Michigan
in the distant 1954. It also celebrated 15 years since the
first international competition held in Sweden and ten years
since the establishment of the first Technical Committee
and the official membership in the large ISU family.
The World Synchronized Skating Championships were the only
world championships held in Zagreb in 2004.
By the number of competitors, the wonderful atmosphere
created throughout the city, the fifteen hundred guests
from thirty countries all over the world, the five thousand
ecstatic fans filling the Dom Sportova arena on both days
of the competition, the excellent media coverage, the 85
journalists, photographers and cameramen (33 from abroad),
it was one of the biggest and the most captivating athletic
events ever to be held in Croatia's capital.
The honorary patronage of the Croatian president Stjepan
Mesić and the patronage of Vlasta Pavić, the mayor of the
city of Zagreb, added a special dimension to this event,
which surpassed all athletic frameworks, and fascinated
even those spectators of the highest athletic and aesthetic
expectations
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