In January 2003, after winning the slalom at Kranjska Gora, Kostelić told the reporters that before the race he had felt "powerful, all-conquering, like a German soldier ready for battle in 1941", in reference to the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union. Although the Croatian media had largely ignored the statement, the weekly tabloid "Nacional" picked up the story and published an article featuring previously unreleased statements made by Kostelić from an interview that he gave to the weekly in May 2002. According to "Nacional" Kostelić said that he was "fascinated" with the scale of the World War II Luftwaffe attack on Britain and gave an opinion on the differences between national socialism and communism saying that "Nationalism was still a healthy system for someone who was ambitious. In communism, we weren’t permitted to be ambitious, and both systems were totalitarian."