Thousands of tourists withstood intense heat to cheer divers leaping from the Old Bridge in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. This year, the landmark's reconstruction after the war marked its 20th anniversary, celebrating its 458-year-old tradition.

The 16th-century bridge, a marvel of Ottoman-era architecture where people have met for centuries from all of Bosnia's ethnic groups, was destroyed by Bosnian Croat artillery in 1993, in one of the major cultural losses of the Bosnian war.

In 2004, it was rebuilt in an effort led by the World Bank and UNESCO as the symbol of reconciliation and unification of the ethnically divided town and inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Thirty-eight athletes from Bosnia-Herzegovina and abroad took part in Sunday's contest, diving 24 meters (80 feet) from the bridge's high arch into the cold waters of the Neretva River below.

"I have been waiting for this the whole year," said 20-year-old Emil Tiro from Mostar, who won the award for best jump feet first for the second time.

"This is more important to me than my birthday, than anything else."

Vedad Dedic won the "swallow dive," a potentially dangerous head-first dive with wide open arms.

"It's such a boost of adrenaline and a shock itself that you even don't feel the coldness of the river," said Dedic.

The contest opened with a performance by a ballet dancer hanging from the bridge on a silk rope and closed with evening jumps by divers carrying torches into the river.

Visitors cooled off in the river or strolled through the narrow, cobbled streets of the Mostar Old Town.

"I think that high diving competitions are among key boosters of tourism in the whole of Bosnia-Herzegovina, not only in Mostar," said Lorens Listo, a high-diving veteran with 13 victories.

"The jumps were born here 458 years ago; it is not a small thing," Listo added. When the bridge was rebuilt, a new generation of divers was inscribed in history."