Tokyo Tracker: Latvia's historic day in Haiyang

There are three truly seminal moments in Latvian beach volleyball history. The first came in August of 2008, a little more than 4,000 miles from Latvia, in Beijing, China. Two young 20-somethings named Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Martins Plavins, the first Latvian beach volleyball team to ever qualify for an Olympic Games, stunned the beach volleyball world, beating the unbeatable, upsetting Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers in the opening round of the Beijing Games.  

The next came four years later, on a similarly momentous stage: the 2012 Olympic Games. There, Janis Smedins and Plavins, seeded 17th in London, felled one giant after the next, upsetting the Netherlands to win the bronze medal, the first in Latvian beach volleyball history.

The most recent, however, may in fact be the biggest. On September 21, 2019, at the Olympic Qualification Tournament in Haiyang, China, not one but two Latvian beach volleyball teams punched their ticket to the Tokyo Olympic Games. Plavins made it his third Olympics in winning with Edgars Tocs, coming back to defeat Russians Ilya Leshukov and Konstantin Semenov 2-1 (12-21, 22-20, 15-8). On the women’s end, young Tina Graudina and Anastasija Kravcenoka edged out the Czech Republic’s Barbora Hermannova and Marketa Slukova 2-1 (21-17, 15-21, 17-15), becoming the first Latvian women’s team to qualify for an Olympic Games.

After the Olympic Qualification Tournament, only six teams in the world had earned berths into the Tokyo Olympics, whenever they should happen. One third of them hail from Latvia, a country of just 1.9 million, or 1/30 the size of the state of California. With Smedins and Samoilovs currently ranked 17th in the Olympic race, Tokyo could be a watershed event for Latvia, with the likely potential for three teams among the competition.

We’ll discuss Smedins and Samoilovs in a later story for the Tokyo Tracker, however. For now, we’re taking stock of the teams that can take it easy this spring and summer, while the rest of the world must travel to wherever there are events, accruing as many points as they can before the qualification deadline.

As mentioned, six teams are officially qualified for Tokyo, regardless of their performance this year. Previously, we covered Canadians Melissa Humana-Paredes and Sarah Pavan, and Russians Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Oleg Stokyanovskiy, who earned an Olympic berth via winning the 2019 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships, held in Hamburg, Germany.

Four other berths, however, were earned via the Olympic Qualification Tournament in Haiyang, China, in September of 2019.

Latvia snatched two of those, with Graudina and Kravcenoka and Plavins and Tocs winning their sides of the bracket.

The other two went to Italians Daniele Lupo and Paolo Nicolai, and Spaniards Elsa Baquerizo and Liliana Fernandez.

Nicolai and Lupo, Olympic viewers have seen before. They were the cheeky youngsters in 2016 when they made their Olympic debut, the 10th-seeded team that barely broke pool, narrowly escaped a lucky loser match against Poland’s Bartosz Losiak and Piotr Kantor, and stormed back to win the silver medal. Since, they’ve become one of the most consistent teams on the planet, perpetually in contention of a medal at every event they enter.

Baquerizo and Fernandez are no strangers to the Olympic stage, either. They competed in London, nearly upsetting Americans Jen Kessy and April Ross before ultimately finishing ninth. Four years later, they’d match that finish in Rio de Janeiro, winning all three matches in pool play before losing to Russia in the second round of elimination.

Also read:
Tokyo Tracker: The pressure is off for Pavan & Humana-Paredes

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FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour
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