Azerbaijan's ESC contestant climbs in European bookmaker list

By AzerNerws

Farid Mammadov, Azerbaijan's representative at the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) to be held in Malmo, Sweden May 14-16, has managed to move up to become tenth in the new list of favorites of the influential bookmaker office William Hill.

Farid will perform fourth in the second semi-final on May 16 with the romantic ballad Hold Me, following the performers from Latvia, San Marino and Macedonia.

For now, Denmark's Emmeli de Forest with the "Only Teardrops" song tops the rankings. Ukrainian representative Zlata Ognevich with the song "Gravity" ranked second, suprising those who predicted 7-9th places for her. Norway's Margaret Berger with "I Feed You My Love" has moved up from the second to the third place.

Remarkably, in the last ten years, bookmakers have successfully predicted 9 of the 10 Eurovision winners. Nevertheless, the results may differ completely, as was the case in 2011, when a strong favorite from France Amaury Vassili finished only 15th.

In the second semifinal, Farid is third after the Norwegian and Georgian representatives.

Currently Farid is touring Europe, where he is being acquainted with other countries' contest representatives, performs his touching song at TV and radio shows and interacts with his fans.

Notwithstanding the busy schedule, Farid always stays in touch with his fans. On April 30, Farid launched his own iPhone and Android Eurovision artist application, which was an absolute novelty yet, given that no other Eurovision performer has had his or her own app prior to the contest to date.

The app, which can be downloaded free of charge, is designed to let Farid get closer to his fans and share all the thrills of his Eurovision adventure.

Speaking of the innovation, Farid said, 'I hope my fans will have lots of fun using it. For me, it will be a great way to keep in touch and get feedback from my fans whenever I'm on my mobile phone or a tablet. I love the idea of creating a new community amongst my fans, where new friendships can be made.'

Farid is also presenting an introductory four-lesson course for daily workouts for fans of a healthy lifestyle. The "Stay Fit with Farid" lessons, which shed light on Farid's secret of superb physical condition, can be seen on his YouTube page.

"Hold on to your health," says Farid as he offers short workout sessions based on capoeira, the Brazilian martial art.

Farid is determined to deliver his best performance at the contest.

Showing a high level of professionalism, Farid impressed well-known Greek stage director Fokas Evangelinos.

Evangelinos said, "He is definitely a hard worker and talented singer. Farid listens to and takes note of all the comments he has given and really wants to show his best on the Eurovision stage. He is a very disciplined perfectionist. It's a real pleasure to work with him."

The performance of the Hold Me song is still kept behind seven locks. Evangelinos said it is not the right time to reveal any details and only noted that the performance would be very emotional and powerful.

"This is my first Eurovision in 4 years. When I heard the Hold Me demo version made by Dimitrios [Dimitrios Kontopoulos, who composed "Hold Me"], I felt something! Later when I saw Farid performing the song on stage everything clicked and I immediately got an idea for the staging. It's a truly unique and very organic combination of the artist and the song," Evangelinos said.

Thirty-nine countries are set to take part in this year`s edition of Europe`s favorite TV show.

Azerbaijan debuted at the ESC in 2008 and won the event on its fourth attempt in 2011 with Ell and Nikki's Running Scared song, which brought the contest to Baku in 2012.

Eurovision is an annual competition held among many of the active member countries of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

The ESC is broadcasting every year since its inauguration in 1956 and thus became one of the longest-running television programs in the world. It is also one of the most watched non-sporting events in the world, with some 100 million to 600 million audience internationally. Since 2000, ESC can be seen online.