Summer sparks Olympic love affair with Latvia

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of postcards that Daily Princetonian sports staff writers wrote about their experiences in the wide world of sports this summer. Keep reading through the next few weeks for more dispatches from across the country and around the world.

After a month spent in Beijing and the Games of the 28th Olympiad, I have drawn one conclusion about the greatness of athletes. Unlike the rest of the world, I have not devoted my singular appreciation to Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt or the Chinese diving team.

Instead, my newfound devotion lies with an entire nation, albeit one with just over two million citizens: Latvia.

This is not to say that my admiration of Latvia has caused me to favor it above the United States, but rather that the athletes of this small country made an impression each and every time they stepped on the field, course or sand.

In fact, the sand was the first place where the Latvians made their mark, and it’s the one I remember best. In their first preliminary game of the beach volleyball competition, the Latvian duo of Martins Plavins and Aleksandrs Samoilovs were slated to take on the U.S. powerhouse tandem of Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser.

At this stage, the latter pair was what inspired my friend Cory and me to head over to the beach volleyball venue in the midst of a sweltering Beijing evening. For days leading up to the matchup, we had heard about nothing other than the dominance of the Rogers-Dalhausser team.

“Dalhausser is so tall!”

“They work so well together!”

“They’re just so good!”

As the matches leading up to Rogers and Dalhausser wore on, it was possible to feel the excitement growing in the stadium. With Keri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor’s opening match still a day away, this would be the world’s first chance to take a look at the United States’ vaunted beach volleyball contingent.

From the moment Rogers and Dalhausser stepped on the sand, however, they disappointed. Latvia’s tandem did not.

The duo appeared so uninterested and listless that members of the crowd began to openly question whether the Americans were suffering the ill-effects of a late night out in one of Beijing’s bar districts.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

Plavins and Samoilovs, on the other hand, came out fired up from the very first point. When Rogers and Dalhausser showed restraint and simply bounced the ball back over the net, the Latvians inevitably came back at them by unleashing a ferocious spike.

While the Latvian pair missed more than their American counterparts, they also recorded far more kills. Between the spikes and their excited reactions to every point won, the crowd quickly swayed in their favor. In contrast, Rogers and Dalhausser barely looked at each other, let alone exchanged the traditional hand-slapping and words of encouragement between points.

Slowly, even the Americans in the crowd — including me — began to favor the Latvians, who actually seemed to care whether they won the match.

After winning a close first set, Plavins and Samoilovs continued to apply pressure on Rogers and Dalhausser, their displays of emotion growing with each successive point.

When the Latvians finally finished off the American duo, the crowd erupted as Plavins danced around the court, giving a high-five to anyone who would accept it. Rogers and Dalhausser appeared much the way they had throughout the match — utterly indifferent.

Of course, at the end of the day, talent still counts for something. Despite their exuberance, the 21st-ranked Latvians bowed out in the round of 16, while Rogers and Dalhausser rebounded to blast their way through the rest of the field, capturing gold for the United States. Their opening night loss to Plavins and Samoilovs was their only loss of the tournament.

Even though Rogers and Dalhausser went on while the Latvians bowed out early, I like to think that the Americans learned something from Plavins and Samoilovs on that sweltering night. Every match after their opening-round loss, the heavy favorites demonstrated some of the same exuberance and zeal for the moment that propelled their Latvian counterparts to victory. At the end of the day, isn’t that what the Olympics is all about?