Just a week after winning the Rio de Janeiro Elite and reaching number four in the World Ranking for the first time together, 41-year-old Martins Plavins, a three-time Olympian and a London 2012 Olympic bronze medalist, and his 21-year-old partner Kristians Fokerots, a two-time age-group world champion, followed up with a bronze in Hamburg and jumped another two positions up, to a new high – second place in the chart. The Latvian pair earned 1,000 World Ranking points, while losing 640 from their previous eighth best result within the last 365 days. Net-gaining 360 points, they improved to a new total of 7,860, enough to overtake reigning Olympic and world champions David Ahman & Jonatan Hellvig of Sweden, who skipped Hamburg, and last week’s number two Evandro Oliveira & Arthur Mariano Lanci of Brazil, who reached the quarterfinals in Germany, into the second place in the ranking.
Plavins & Fokerots are 460 points short of top-ranked Jacob Holting Nilsson & Elmer Andersson of Sweden. The Adelaide 2025 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championship runners-up also reached the quarterfinals in Hamburg, while their points from last year’s first place at the Baden Challenge expired, so they actually suffered a net loss of 40 points down to a current score of 8,320.
