RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Martins Plavins had a bucket list.
He told no one, save for his wife. Good thing, too, for had he told anyone else, he may very well have been laughed out of the room.
The list did not include a gold medal, or an Olympic berth, or anything of that nature. It featured but three names.
Plavins wanted Germany’s Nils Ehlers and Clemens Wickler. He wanted Sweden’s David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig. And he wanted Norway’s Anders Mol and Christian Sorum.
Such a list would be audacious for anyone in the beach volleyball world. Here were the three teams who ended most every tournament on the podium. The latter two have won the previous two Olympic Games. The former took silver in Paris.
Yet it was doubly audacious for Plavins, given that he wouldn’t play his first event of consequence until August, and planned on only two more. Three shots, then, to beat three teams with a combined record of 121-37 and hauled in a combined 15 medals. Only one team in the world had completed such a list: Stefan Boermans and Yorick de Groot.
It took Plavins and Kristians Fokerots three events.
In Vienna for the European Championships, down went Germany in the finals, a win that secured Plavins and Fokerots a most unexpected of gold medals.
This past week, at the Rio de Janeiro Elite16, down went Sweden in the quarterfinals, as Plavins and Fokerots pulled off the unthinkable, battling back from down 2-7 and 16-19 to steal the first set and dominating the second. With that win, they ended Sweden’s streak of 11 consecutive tournaments with a podium.
A pair of semifinal upsets – Latvia dropping to Argentina’s Nico Capogrosso and England’s Bello brothers shocking Mol and Sorum – gifted Plavins a final opportunity to complete the list. Already, he had played Mol and Sorum twice that year. Neither had been close. In Joao Pessoa, they were humbled, 21-16, 21-18. In pool play in Rio, it was even worse: 21-17, 21-12.
Yet there were Plavins and Fokerots, optioning and slapping and chopping their way to a 21-18 opening set win. But this is Norway, a team who, even clearly not 100 percent, would not go quietly into the night. Mol and Sorum adjusted their defense, leaving Sorum in the seam to make a last-second move. It worked, to the tune of a 21-13 win.
Fifteen points, then, to decide who’d win bronze.
Fifteen points to complete the list.
Norway’s cheeky defense couldn’t sustain itself, as Plavins and Fokerots countered back, leaping out to an early lead and holding on for a 15-11 win.
A bucket list complete.
Another medal secured.
Kristians Fokerots/Volleyball World photo
“It’s a crazy year,” Plavins said. “We had a small bucket list. Germans, Sweden, now Norway. We are glad we made it. It is crazy when you play calm and you’re an underdog, like now, you can play a pretty good game.”
One could have been forgiven for thinking them underdogs once. Plavins is 39, two decades into his playing career. Fokerots, meanwhile, is just 19. He was seven months old when Plavins made his professional debut.
They are underdogs no more.
Plavins has proven, as many before him have – Reinder Nummerdor, Jake Gibb, Phil Dalhausser, John Hyden, Nick Lucena – that age has little bearing on success in a sport that prides itself on longevity. Fokerots has proven that, at 19, he is the most precocious talent in the world.
“It means a lot,” Fokerots said of the bronze medal. “In my opinion, Norway is the best team. They keep the level for years and to be able to play against them and even win, it’s. big. It’s big. You have to keep in mind there’s still a lot of things to work on. We’ve proved to ourselves we can do it, but there’s a lot of work.”
Come 2025, there will be another bucket list to complete.
