By Ann Mary Quarandillo

On the Cover: Matiss Zacmanis, '97, at the Salt Lake Olympics in Utah

Everyone, it seems, offers an opinion on the best place to see the race.
“Curve 11.”
“No, I heard Curve 6.”
“You can see best at the start.”

That last viewpoint belongs only to the brave, dedicated few willing to climb the entire track to see the “bobbers” push off. The higher the climb, the thinner the air, the tougher the breathing. Volunteers shout, “You can do it!” to the hikers struggling past them. Is it really worth an hour’s climb to watch these sleds barrel past at 80 miles per hour? As their legs burn the hikers pause to catch their breath. They get an inkling of what these athletes have gone through to reach the top of this sport. Years of work, and effort, and climbing, for a contest often decided by hundredths of a second.

At 3:20 the light softens. Above the heartiest of the hikers, Matiss Zacmanis, ’97, (pronounced MAH-tees ZATS-man-is) stands at the top of the mountain, in the bobsleigh start house. His Latvian teammates, slowed by injuries, hadn’t met their high expectations at the ’98 Olympics in Nagano. Zacmanis had been recruited to help avoid a similar showing in Salt Lake. Now, in thin, pale air a mile above sea level, the sleek, royal blue Latvian sled slides into position, the weight of a country on the shoulders of four men.

As a member of the Latvian bobsleigh team, Zacmanis had traveled to Salt Lake City before for World Cup competition. He claims that bobsleigh is bobsleigh, wherever they compete, but being one of the most popular teams in your country always adds pressure. Latvians follow bobsleigh like Americans follow football—the evening news reports competition results, and most people know the athletes. And this is the Olympics. The former Berea track star downplays any nervousness at participating in the pinnacle of his sport.

“You want to do your best,” Zacmanis admits. “And it takes off the pressure if you think you know how to do your best. We don’t have to think ‘OK, this is the Olympics—this time I have to do my best.’ No, we do our best all the time.”

Being at the top of his game is nothing new to Zacmanis. Track and cross country coach Mike Johnson, ’73, says he wasn’t surprised when he received the message that Zacmanis had made the Latvian Olympic team. Johnson remembers Zacmanis as “focused—very focused. He was focused on two things—being a student, and being an athlete.” While at Berea, Zacmanis broke the school record in the decathlon with 6,719 points, a record that still stands. He also holds the College records in shot put and javelin. He finished 7th in the nation in the decathlon.

So why is he competing in bobsleigh?

Over the past few Winter Olympics, more and more track stars have used their skills in the bobsleigh. After graduation, Zacmanis had continued his track training at home in Latvia’s capital city of Riga, but it was difficult. Track and field was not very popular in Latvia, and there was little financial support for the athletes. He didn’t have the support of the college team, and the closest track was across town; plus, he needed to concentrate on his career, and his new marriage to Inga Zacmane, also a track and field star in the heptathlon.

Zacmanis’ Olympic journey actually started at his June 1998 wedding. “I had invited the bobsleigh coach,” he recalls, “and two days later he asked me ‘What are you going to do next?’ That’s when he told me that I should keep practicing and in a couple weeks to come for trials.”

The Latvian team had an experienced and successful driver in Sandis Prusis, but did not perform as well as they thought they should have in the 1998 Nagano Olympics. Injuries had hurt them, which is why the coach asked Zacmanis to try out. “I prepared for a couple of months, and I did real well at the tests,” says Zacmanis. “The pilot (Prusis) got interested in me and took me for his brakeman in the 1998-99 season.”

Zacmanis’ first race was on November 14, 1998—a World Cup race in Calgary, Canada, where the Latvians finished in ninth place. “Ninth place in the World Cup, the first time going down as a four-man team,” Zacmanis still marvels. “Back home we have a bobsled track, but it’s only a two-man, because it’s actually a luge track. So I didn’t try a four-man bobsled until we went to the first World Cup. But it was good enough for a top ten finish.”

The team kept improving. In 1998-99, they finished fourth in Igls, Austria. In 1999-2000, they won a silver in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, and a bronze in LaPlagne, France, and finished fifth in the 2000 world championships in Altenberg, Germany, for second place overall in the World Cup Series. Last season, the team took World Cup silver in Cortina, bronze in Calgary, and silver in Lake Placid. They finished fourth in the 2001 world championships in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and again achieved second place overall in the 2000-01 World Cup Series. The Olympics in Salt Lake were the culmination of the 2001-02 season, and would determine the world champion.

At the top of the Olympic track, Zacmanis stands ready to help the team fly. But when the four athletes push off from the start house, Zacmanis remains behind, shouting his support, watching his teammates fly down the track, and feeling the pull of the turns he knows so well.

For the Olympics, Prusis brought four athletes for the three push athlete positions, with Zacmanis as the alternate. The choice of push athletes is completely up to the driver, who bases his decision on numerous factors, including speed and strength tests, as well as his perception of the best combination of athletes. Prusis had chosen to stay with three athletes who had worked longer together, and Zacmanis did not get to push.

The Latvians streak down the track. Their time of 47.65 seconds launches them to the top of the leader’s board, making Prusis’ decision look good. But as one, two, then six other sleds better the Latvians’ time, Zacmanis feels the same anguish as his teammates. They finish seventh overall. On Berea’s campus, at least, observers believe Latvia would have done better had Zacmanis participated. As Coach Johnson says, “Matiss looked more athletic than most of the people winning medals.”

That reserve role may not have suited such a competitive athlete as Zacmanis, who began running track in the third grade, but Coach Johnson remembers him as the kind of athlete that would always step up when he was needed. Johnson first heard of Zacmanis from his sister, Monika Zacmane, who studied at Berea. Always on the lookout for talent, he had asked Zacmane if she knew any athletes back home.

“She said ‘Yes, my brother is quite a good athlete in track and field,’” says Zacmanis. “Coach asked me to send him some scores and that was it. He said it would be all right if I go to college and run for him.”

Zacmanis not only starred on the team, but helped coach his teammates, working with them on different events as well as weight training. “I still wish I had him around to help me,” Johnson says. “He was big and strong, but he did things the correct way, so I could let him work with other athletes. He was like having not only an athlete, but an assistant who knew the events as only an athlete would know
the events.”

The Johnsons also served as Zacmanis’ host family. “Everything I needed, Coach always gave me, so I could perform my best. Whenever I had spare time, they would ask me when I could come over,” Zacmanis recalls. “Coach and his wife, Kay, (Mary Kay Claiborne, ’74) even took me to Gatlinburg for Christmas. Just like real family.”

“You know, you get linked with people,” says Johnson. “The first time I ever saw Matiss face to face, I was driving a post over at the cross country course, and he helped me drive that post into the ground. And even though later I no longer needed that post, I left it in the ground for years just because he helped me.”

Retired German professor Jlmars Birznieks provided another kind of family for Zacmanis. “Dr. Birznieks was a Latvian,” Zacmanis explains. “I think he also put a word in for me to come to the College, because he wanted to have a Latvian here. So he was like my Latvian family, and Coach Johnson was my athletic family.”

Zacmanis didn’t just stand out as a record-breaking athlete, but as a student in business administration as well. Martie Kazura, associate professor of business and chair of the business and economics department, remembers him as a hard worker with a great sense of humor, who was respected by his peers as well as his teachers. “In all of his team projects, a peer grade constituted one-third of his project grade.” Kazura recalls. “In all three classes, Zacmanis’ groups (which had been randomly selected) gave him high marks. He truly does work and play well with others!”

Zacmanis values most learning to be part of an international family while at Berea. Having grown up in Latvia under Soviet occupation, he always knew he wanted to study in the United States and experience other cultures. Latvia had won its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, but the last Soviet troops didn’t leave the country until 1994, when Zacmanis was looking for colleges. He wanted a college that would let him test his newfound freedom.

“The best thing about Berea is all the international society,” Zacmanis says. “That experience goes beyond any kind of academic knowledge you can obtain.” One of his best friends was fellow track star Henno Haava, ’98, a five-time All-American from Estonia, on the northern border of Latvia. “Many of my best friends were from other countries,” Zacmanis remembers. “The first year, I lived with Fekade Bekele, ’97, an Ethiopian guy who everybody called ‘Fox.’ The rest of the years I lived with Prakash Shahi, ‘98, from Nepal. And those people had friends from other nations, so we had international gatherings everywhere. During the four years there, you learn a lot about other cultures. I made good use of everything I learned.”

Participating in the Olympics under the Latvian flag has added another layer to his international experience. On Sunday, Feb. 24, 2002, when International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge closed the Salt Lake Olympics, he said to the athletes, “Keep this flame alight. You are the true ambassadors of the Olympic values.” Zacmanis had already experienced that
international kinship here in Berea, and it has served him well.

Zacmanis graduated with a major in business administration, and used that knowledge, as well as his international experience, when he returned home. “I was born in Riga, and raised and educated in Riga,” he says fondly. “I knew I would like to go back. It just feels like home.” Before he came to Berea, he had signed an agreement with the Hotel Latvia in downtown Riga. They paid for his plane tickets, and gave him money for the deposits international students must place before going to college. In return, he agreed to come back and work for them for one year.

“When I was at the College, I took courses in hotel management, and I worked in Boone Tavern as well, so that was basically enough for me to get around in the hotel," he remembers. "I was a bellhop, and I was a dining room server, and front desk clerk. All the international experience I had, working with international people and actually seeing the way hotels run was very helpful."

When his year at the hotel was through, Zacmanis decided to apply his business skills to his own company. During his time at Berea, he had also worked in Seabury gym - in the weight room, as a janitor and at the front desk - so the fitness business was a natural fit. In 1999, he gathered some partners, and opened, "Atlantis," a fitness club in Riga, where he worked for two years as a director and general manager. He also became a representative for American fitness equipment. His club had placed the largest order from the Baltic states, and the company asked him to represent them in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. "I said 'sure!' he laughs. "People will come in asking for equipment and I'll be selling it. So we organized a second company and did that."

Meanwhile, he had started doing bobsleigh. When the Olympic year started Zacmanis had difficulty finding time for all his endeavors. "We had more training camps going on, and trainings were harder," he says. "I had less and less time for work, so I had to sell my shares in the fitness club. I still have the equipment company, so that's what I'll basically be doing after the Olympics."

Zacmanis tried to take his first Olympics in stride, although he says it's different than any other competition. When he walks down the streets of Salt Lake City in his Latvian uniform, he stands out, and not just because of his 6'4" frame and shock of brilliant blonde hair. At the opening ceremonies, he noticed the biggest difference. "It looked like everybody was very happy," he recalls. "I wasn't used to that, because at the World Cups it doesn't happen. When you are walking down the street (at the Olympics), everybody is hanging on the fences and crying and screaming and shouting, and they want to see you, they want to touch you. People around here actually make the atmosphere so Olympic. The people. We have just the regular job that we do, but with everything else, you know what it means for the people."

And participating in the Olympics is more than just another competition for Zacmanis. His father, Janis, a cyclist, had trained for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. But politics, not performances, prevented that dream. "My father was supposed to go to the Olympics in '68, but that was the time of the Soviet Union, and something didn't work out with the team," Zacmanis says. "I don't know actually what was the reason - perhaps they didn't want to take Latvians on the team. Whatever the reason, he didn't go to the Olympics, so for me to go, it's kind of a dream. My parents are my biggest fans." And what about Torino in 2006? Will he continue to compete?

"Yeah, so far, I think I'll keep going," he says. It depends greatly on driver Sandis Prusis, who is 36 years old, and may retire after the Olympics. "If he keeps going, I'll stay," Zacmanis concludes. "If he doesn't keep going, it's probably not worth staying, since our other pilots probably won't be ready to compete for medals in 2006. Once you've been up to the top, you never want to come back."

Coach Johnson is glad to see Zacmanis reaching the pinnacle of his sport. "I've seen a lot of sports over my lifetime, and I've looked at a lot of athletes," says Johnson. "Matiss is right up there with them. He's standing up for the other great Berea athletes. He's just made it to the top."