Gymnast Mitja Petkovsek and Alpine skier Tina Maze were voted as Slovenia's best male and female athletes of 2005 by the association of sports reporters, with the awards ceremony staged on Thursday evening in Ljubljana.

Petkovsek, 28 years old, had his best season so far, winning the finals of the World Cup in Germany and Slovenia, coming third at the European Championships in Poland and finally beating the world's finest at the recent World Championship in Australia, the Slovene Press Agency reported.

The 22-year-old Maze won the women's award for winning four giant slalom races in 2005.

Meanwhile the journalists chose the rowing pair Iztok Cop and Luka Spik as the best team in individual sports for the second year in a row and the national basketball team as the best team in collective sports.

For Cop and Spik the 2005 award is the fifth in their careers. Slovenia's best pairing earned it by excellent performances at the September World Rowing Championship in Japan, where they won gold in double sculls and silver in quadruple sculls.

The national basketball team has won the prize by coming in sixth at the European Championships in Serbia-Montenegro in September, which secured Slovenia its first-ever ticket for the 2006 World Basketball Championships and direct qualification for the 2007 European Championships.

The award-winning ceremony at the Ljubljana Cankarjev Dom conference venue, which took place for the 15th time in a row since Slovenia's independence, was organized by the sports reporters association in collaboration with the Slovenian Olympic Committee.

Source: Xinhua