Swiss dropped from Eurovision line-up

Francine Jordi and Belgium's Sergio give the thumbs up after their Eurovision performances Keystone Archive

Switzerland faces exclusion from the 2003 Eurovision song contest after its entry came third last at Saturday's show in Estonia. Latvia won the event.

The Swiss entry, “Dans le jardin de mon âme” (“In the Garden of my Soul”), performed by Francine Jordi, managed to scrape just 15 votes.

It’s the latest in a series of embarrassing results for Switzerland at Europe’s biggest televised music event. Switzerland was last relegated in 1998 when that year’s entrant, Gunvor, failed to win a single point.

Other recent Swiss entries have been only slightly more successful.

Jordi’s romantic ballad won five points from Austrian spectators, three each from Romania and France, two from Germany, and one point from both Slovenia and Latvia.

Disappointment

For the 24-year-old Bernese, who enjoys popularity at home and in the German-speaking world, the result was a disappointment, but not a disaster.

“I sang well and I’m satisfied with my performance,” Jordi said. “I’m not going to start howling over the results of one competition.”

“From here I’m going to St Petersburg, then on to the Tyrol and Germany. And then it’s the start of my first solo tour in Switzerland.”

The Eurovision song contest will remain in the Baltics for another year after Latvia’s Marie Naumova won the three-hour extravaganza in Tallinn with her Latino number, “I Wanna”.

Estonia was the first former communist state ever to host the annual show, which is watched by hundreds of millions of television viewers.

swissinfo