The Winning Distance

The Eurovision trophy has been treading up and down a fairly well worn path over the last decade, carving out a crescent running from Scandinavia, through Eastern Europe, down as far Greece and Turkey and back again.

Nowhere west of Copenhagen has had so much as a look in since the 20th century and now the trophy is in Moscow (the furthest east it has ever been) the chances of the west snatching it back are looking less and less likely.

So, who’s in with a shout of taking the throne?

The average distance between the hosting cities of the competition in the last ten years is 945.5 miles.  This year the competition is hosted in Moscow and, marking it as the centre point, there are 10 host cities which fall within the 945.5 mile radius.

Of those cities, Bucharest (Romania) is the closest to 945.5, finding itself located 921.1 miles away from Moscow – 24.4 miles shy of the target distance.

However, if we are to allow cities which fall beyond the perimeter of the 945.5 mile radius, Bucharest is not the closest city to the average distance. Budapest (Hungary) is 963.9 miles away from Moscow, making it just 18.4 miles off the winning distance, beating Romania by a slim six miles.

According to distance, the Top 5 would look like this:
1) Hungary – 963.9 miles (18.4 off)
2) Romania – 921.1 miles (24.4 off)
3) Denmark – 975.7 miles (30.2 off)
4) Slovakia – 1000.5 miles (55.0 off)
5) Germany – 1002.5 miles (57.0 off)

Maybe the clues are in the titles…