On a night of celebration as Latvia looked back on a brilliant 2016 in track and field for the country, Marite Luse and Aleksandrs Prokopcuks, were both honoured with special European Athletics Coaching Awards.
As Zigismunds Sirmais was named male athlete of the year, after winning javelin gold at the European Athletics Championships in Amsterdam, and heptathlete Laura Ikauniece-Admidina won the women’s title for her Olympic fourth place – her trainer Andis Austrups was recognised as the best coach of 2016 – Luse and Prokopcuks were hailed for their contributions to the sport.
Luse is Latvia’s main coach for sprints, distances and horizontal jumps with two training groups of young athletes and seniors.
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It was a great year for her in 2016 with a number of her athletes competing for the national team at all levels of the sport – in Baltic States competitions at under-18 and under-20, at the World under-20 championships in Bydgoszcz and at the European Athletics Championships.
And among the success were two of her athletes breaking national records.
At home in Saldus on 12 July, Elvijs Misans achieved a new long jump mark of 8.08m while 11 days later Austris Karpinskis ran the second leg of the 4x400m relay at the World Under-20 Championships where the squad ran a Latvian best of 3:10.85.
For more than 70 athletes, Luse is like a mother as she takes responsibility of their training and beyond, helping with their university entry, finding jobs and good places to live, while at the same time always looking for funding to ensure the best training camps for those who work with her.
Along with being a competitor himself, Prokopcuks has been a coach since 1990 and his best athlete is his wife – long-distance star Jeļena Prokopcuka.
One of the best marathoners of all-time, Prokopcuka won in New York in 2005 and 2006 and Osaka in 2005 and 2015 among her many triumphs which also includes 51 national titles and guided by Prokopcuks, she holds six outdoor national records (3000m, 5000m, 10,000m, 10km (road), half-marathon and marathon) and one indoor (3000m).
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His inspiration as a coach came from him being a world-class marathon runner too, having competed for Latvia at three Olympic Games: Atlanta (1996), Sydney (2000) and Athens (2004).
In the presence of Guntis Zalitis, the President of the Latvian Athletic Federation, there was also an honour for Andris Stagis who received a Member Federation award for a lifelong contribution to athletics.
Stagis is an historian, statistician and the most popular and experienced athletics commentator in Latvia and since 1982, he has commentated on more than 450 competitions including many in Riga, such as the European Athletics Junior Championships in 1999, four European Cups (1996-2004) and almost all Latvian Championships.
A member of Association of Track and Field Statisticians since 1971, Stagis is a fountain of all knowledge about the sport and a prolific author too, including, since 1975, publishing the Latvian Athletics Association yearbook.