VOTE FOR ‘RABBIT’ (in Croatian - ZEC = rabbit, a nickname of Goran Ivanišević in Croatian press - translator’s remark), SAMPRAS IS NOT FAR AWAY

By Danijel LIJOVIĆ

Croatia is well known sports country. That is a fact that needs no special proof in the world. If not in live action, through the media, recipients from almost around the Globe are familiar with Croatian top sportsmen, who are so often called Croatian ambassadors. (in ours home country at least - translator’s remark)

The same function, of promoting the Croatian sport and, of course, everything else that you can think of, has the new media - INTERNET as well. Although, it’s not new anymore, it would be more convenient to call it ‘the most expansive one’ at the moment.

It was written recently in this newspapers about Croatian sports on Internet (that article was written by one of my colleagues and me - translator’s remark), but this time we are interested exclusively in - how much do Croatian athletes appear in the cyber world and specially on the web sites that are not created nor exposed on the computers in Croatia or Croatian language. So, how much attention are strangers paying to our ‘sports aces’?

On the track of that question we surfed through the most famous browsers - YAHOO and ALTA VISTA.

Kukoč and Ivanišević most wanted

The most mentioned name is the name of the Toni Kukoč, basketball player of Chicago Bulls. If you type his name on the search engine of pedantic ALTA VISTA browser, you will get a list of 105.758 matches to look at (at that time today this figure is probably a lot higher… - translator’s remark) . But the actual number of sites dedicated to our basketball player (called home pages) is a lot less, because on Altavista you’ll get a list of all the pages where Toni’s name is mentioned. However, in reference to the rest of our athletes only Goran Ivanišević (77.872 matches) is ‘capable’ to cope with Toni’s kind of status on the ‘Net’. (Regarding this large numbers of web pages it is impossible to locate every site that is dedicated to specific person and to count their exact number - authors note).

Some of most successful Kukoč’s cyber issues you may find on the following web address: //members.aol.com/toni7babe/kukoc.html - 2586 hits from the February 1st (till April 10th ). You should also visit some other sites regarding Kukoč: //www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Stadium/5288/tonik.html, //www.cen.uiuc.edu/~tmoriart/tonihome.html. Not to left out the official site of NBA which has a Kuki’s statistics: //www.nba.com/playerfile/profile/toni-kukoc/html.

Goran Ivanišević is, along side the Kukoč, Croatian ‘most widespread’ Croatian athlete on the Web with 77.872 matches on his behalf (at that time - translator’s remark). The easiest way to find the Split’s athlete’ s home pages is to use Yahoo’s search engine and just type his name in the box.

We’ll point out as one of the best (that there exist at this moment - translator’s remark) of these home pages the site of Australian Croatian Peter Mavra

(//wwww.geocities.com/Colosseum/Loge/2047). The page contains plenty of photography and information, and the special value are the Goran’s famous quotes. It’s worth to visit these URL’s as well: //www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Arena/4535/goran.html, //www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/3279/GORAN.htm. It’s interesting that the web counters of hits or entries on these pages are not showing greater frequently (from few hundreds till few thousands) and one of the reasons may be that Goran is spoken of in circle of already known fans.

Quite interesting gathering place of the Ivanisevic’s fans is ‘The Goran Ivanišević board’ (//www.tennis.com/goran). Here you may jump into commenting and summarizing topics regarding Ivanišević, or find out some interesting data, such as that in one American magazine Goran was chosen by the tennis players as the player who is the most deserving to won a Grand Slam tournament and never did. Meanwhile on the list of the most famous tennis players (//www.1serve.com/popular.htm) Goran is first - after Sampras (at that time - translator’s remark). So, vote for Goran, more and rather quick is the message from the Ivanišević’s fans.

Šuker seen 123.088 times

The soccer players are led by Davor Šuker of Real Madrid, who’s popularity in the eyes of fans outside Croatia has increased specially because of the great matches in England on the European soccer championship in 1996 and his transfer to Real Madrid. For the nostalgic crowd out there is a great article of English reporters about the Euro ’96 on this address: //www.valdosta.peachnet.edu/acrnjac/articles2.html, where Šuker’s play vs. Denmark is described in every detail. Šuker also got his place on the page of well known VIRTUAL SOCCER site (www.isfa.com/server/web/v-soccer/suker.html). On that site there are personal cards of 213 players, 17 coaches, 41 countries and 7 clubs, and Šuker’s site has astonishing 123.088 hits. Famous Spanish papers "MARCA" has also submit the proper treatment for the Croatian striker: //marca.recoletos.es/suker.

Otherwise, although not less important to us, other Croatian top athletes - Željko Mavrović (many times European heavy-weight champion in boxing, preparing for upcoming fight with Lenox Lewis for the world title…- translator’s remark), Alen Bokšić, Zvonimir Boban (famous Croatian soccer players of Lazio and Milan - translator’s remark), Zoran Primorac (table tennis player, second in the world on the official ranking - translator’s remark)…have gained a lot less space on the Internet and it is harder to find theirs data and updates. That is the case with Iva Majoli as well, her popularity jump up rapidly after winning last years Roland Garros. Her activity is well monitored but there aren’t any more organized sites on which her fans could find out some specific information…

DRAŽEN PETROVIĆ

And while the fifth year of the time that Croatia lost its most valuable ‘sports unique personality’ - Dražen Petrović is approaching (famous basketball player killed in the car accident in 1993, 7th June, in Germany) the activity on Internet regarding the glory of our legendary athlete is not ceasing. Some of the best web pages regarding to Croatian sports in general are dedicated to Dražen, so we are going to make an exception and mention the work of a Croatian basketball player Dumančić: //public.srce.hr/~ddumanci/petrovic/petro.htm). The site has been entered 7825 times since November 4th of 1996 (till April 10th of 1998). He made extremely well designed home page in English, and its greatest power are concentrated in the emotional approach, which was recognized by people around the world who sent theirs most intimate thoughts about Dražen to this page.

Though, every page about Petrović is full of emotions and honest confessions. Even one American sports editor capitulate on this subject, reveling his emotions in his recent article (//www.thetorch.com/1.01/sports/sportscene.thml) in the looking forward to the day when should have been Dražen’s 34th birthday… See also: //163.118.4.6:8000/~josko2/Drazen.html and //www.nba.com/nets/00397954.html.

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