The Beach Volley Blog is honored to have a beach volleyball legend write its first ever guest post. Mark Heese is a three time Olympian and first ever Olympic beach volleyball bronze medalist. He competed on the world tour from 1992 to 2008 and his 166 world tour appearances is the most ever by a Canadian and 15th on the all time list. Mark is part of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) Olympic commentary team and brings insider knowledge to every match he covers. He also has a great twitter feed that is a must follow for beach volleyball fans.
Mark can identify with the disappointment Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Janis Smedins felt last month while falling just short of a fourth Olympics. I know you’ll enjoy Mark’s insight into the Olympic qualification journey and how his story intersects with Aleksandrs Samoilovs’s.
Guest Post by Mark Heese
Aleksandrs Samoilovs, better known as “The Latvian Lion King” to his many beach volleyball fans around the world, has been on my mind for 13 years! Not because of his lion-like mane of long, curly hair, or the fact that he ROARS into the camera after every big win on the FIVB World Tour. It’s not even because he has been one of the top players on the tour for the last four Olympic cycles! Those are not the reasons he keeps popping up in my thoughts.. (although admittedly, he does have a pretty impressive head of hair!).
The main reason I think of him, and his then-partner Martin Plavins, so often over the years, especially around the Olympics, is because that team, in the race to qualify for Beijing 2008, came out of nowhere, and rattled off 4 top-ten finishes in the final stretch of tournaments, to steal the last qualifying spot away from me and my Canadian beach partner, Ahren Cadieux.
I remember Samoilovs so vividly when he arrived on tour full time in 2007. He stood out… his wild hair, his big grin, his unorthodox style of play, his relentless hustle and competitive spirit. He was so outgoing and confident, very comfortable in his own skin, always interacting with all the players off the court, and joking around like he had been there for a decade. I remember thinking, “Who roars into the camera after winning? Who was this guy?”
Truth is, I was really impressed with him, and there was a part of me that was secretly cheering for this kid. On the other hand, I was fully aware that he was there to try and take my spot, and like every other young player that came on the tour during my career, I always seemed to sub-consciously evaluate them to personally measure if they had what it takes to make it on tour. I would check out their skills on the court, of course, but it was mainly their character that I paid close attention to, and how they conducted themselves on and off the court. Ultimately that is what defines a World Tour athlete, and someone that can stick it out and become a full-time tour player and Olympian. It wasn’t long before I realized that this kid definitely had something special.
Qualification heartbreak
I was 39, and shooting for my 4th Olympic Games, which would have put a nice bookend to a seventeen year career competing for Canada on the FIVB beach volleyball World Tour. But it wasn’t meant to be, and when I spiked the last ball a couple of centimetres wide at the last qualifying event in Marseille France, 13 years ago, and lost to a Norwegian team 16-14 in the third and final set, it became official… we would NOT qualify for Tokyo, and instead the young Latvians, Samoilovs/Plavins, would secure the last and final Olympic spot! I sat on the court in disbelief for half an hour, before finally leaving the sand. I just couldn’t believe it was over. That wasn’t how it was supposed to end.
Losing sucks, and although I have played (and lost) hundreds of international matches during my career, including some real painful ones at the Olympics, (like the semi-final in 1996 vs. Americans Karch and Kent 15-11, or the quarter-finals in Sydney 2000 to Brazil’s Ricardo/Ze Marco 15-13, or how about this stinger.. the quarter finals in Athens 2004 vs Spain’s Herrera/Bosma after leading 13-10 in the third… ouch!!!), none have haunted me more than the series of losses in my failed 2008 Olympic run. We just needed ONE more win (or ONE more Latvian loss) and it would have happened. But it didn’t, and I have had to suck it up and try to accept it ever since. Definitely not the way I envisioned my career ending. But a reality that every athlete has to eventually face. It was over, and that feeling was the most difficult one I have ever encountered as an athlete.
Samoilovs comes up just short in Tokyo Quest
So that is why the Lion King has been on my mind, and why his story has once again come to my attention thirteen years later, during the race to Tokyo! I have been preparing for my role as a commentator/analyst for CBC, Canada’s Olympic broadcaster, and have closely followed Samoilovs’ journey to Tokyo. I found myself cheering for him and his partner Janis Smedins. They are a gritty team, who play their hearts out every match. But now my heart goes out to Samoilovs. He has enjoyed a storied career, attending several Olympics and World Championships, and amassing over 100 top ten finishes, but now (sadly) it is his turn, to feel the sting of being ONE win away from a fourth Olympics.
One by one, Samoilovs and his partner, had to watch younger teams rise up this season and steal a top-4 result (or two) and jump ahead of them in the Olympic standings. Italians Carambula/Rossi, Poland’s Kantor/Losiak, and the Czechs Perusic/Schweiner, all clutched out with some amazing results to push the Latvians down the ranking and sit just 20 points out of the last Olympic spot (that is just one win shy of a qualifying position). Just like in 2008, when our Olympic spot slipped away, and I had to watch the Japanese, the Italians, and the Latvians rattle off top ten results in the final events to push them past our team and one win out of the last spot. It was the most difficult thing in my beach career to go through… witnessing first-hand, our ticket to the Games, slowly slip through our fingers. Now the man that did it to me, has it happen to him, and I shake my head in disbelief, at the cruelty sport puts us through.
It has come full circle. Samoilovs started off his Olympic career knocking an older veteran player like me, out of the race for a fourth set of rings.. but now finds himself on the receiving end of a similar blow. It is a crude reminder of the World Tour “circle of life”, and perhaps not so surprising that it is the Lion King who ironically is reminded of that reality.
I reached out to him to express my support, and let him know I was writing a story about him. He says in true Samoilovs fashion:
“It was a pleasure competing against you… and the Lion will still kick some asses 🦁! ”
A perfect mix of respect, resilience, and swagger that only Aleksandrs can pull off!
Perhaps a fourth Olympics is still within his reach after all, as Paris is only three years away. Just like in 2008, I’m finding it very hard not to root for him. Keep roaring Lion King!