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Ozo Layer Colorado defenseman hails from city of survivors
Posted: Wednesday February 02, 2000 04:27 PM By David Vecsey, CNNSI.com
Kind of puts a sour spin on the already dubious "nice place to visit" cliche, doesn't it? Especially because, as Colorado Avalanche defenseman Sandis Ozolinsh points out, it is a great place to live. Ozolinsh and his wife, Sandra, still take their two sons home to Riga for the offseason. Riga, a port city on the Baltic Sea, is the capital of Latvia. Germans founded Riga in 1201 and it subsequently fell under Swedish, Polish, German and Russian rule. Latvia finally proclaimed independence shortly after the end of World War I, on Nov. 18, 1918. Of course, that didn't last long with the Soviets reclaiming the Baltic States toward the end of the 1930s. Though Nov. 18 still is the national day of independence, the Latvians did it all over again on Aug. 21, 1991, when they declared themselves independent of Soviet rule. The ever-changing ethnicity of the city is reflected in the fact that only about 55 percent of the people living in Latvia are purebred Latvians. None of this really concerned a young Sandis Ozolinsh, who grew up mostly oblivious of the oppression as he became a prodigy in both figure skating and hockey. Winter sports are popular in Riga, where rolling landscapes and high precipitation make for active winters. Watching Ozolinsh play defense in the NHL, you can appreciate his early love of figure skating. He glides from end to end effortlessly with no fear of jumping into an odd-man rush or letting loose with one of his cannon blasts from the blue line. He is one of the premier power play quarterbacks in the league, piling up power play points faster than any other defenseman over the past four or five seasons. He would have been a treat to watch on some of those old Soviet hockey teams. But he is happier to play for Latvia. Naturally. Along with Carolina goalie Arturs Irbe, Ozolinsh has established a youth hockey charity foundation that they hope someday will give Latvian children the opportunity to compete at the highest level of hockey. Riga has similar hopes across the board. As it gears up for a big celebration for its 800th anniversary next year, Riga is doing what it can to adapt to life in the new millenium. While moving forward in attempting to become a financial center of the Baltic Region, Riga is renovating cultural landmarks like the Dome Cathedral and the Museum of Modern Art, planning festivals and sociological conferences. Riga will be the place to be in 2001 ... this time, for all the right reasons. How would you describe Riga? Is it urban, is it a village? Sandis Ozolinsh: It's your basic post-Soviet town. There's a nice downtown with a lot of surrounding areas with big, old houses. I don't know what you'd call it now. There's a lot of industry. Everybody's just trying to make money where they can. What are people doing to get by these days? Sandis Ozolinsh: Buy and sell, basically. That's the major thing. The majority of the people import things from other places and it just goes from hand to hand selling and buying. So capitalism comes with a price? Sandis Ozolinsh: Yeah, yeah. Now people realize how good it was under communist rule when they didn't have to do anything and they still got paid. Now they're like, "Oh, wait a second ... I have to earn this money." Obviously when you were growing up there, it was still under Soviet rule. How did that affect your life? Sandis Ozolinsh: I didn't care much. We had it all. We had everything the kids needed. We had a chance to go to Soviet schools, which we didn't realize how fortunate we were. We didn't have to pay for it, we could play all the sports we wanted. We had a lot of opportunities to succeed. I wasn't involved much in politics when I was younger, so I didn't care. But were you aware of older folks who were bitter or resentful of the occupation? Were the people walking around saying, "Wait'll we get rid of the Russians." Sandis Ozolinsh: I don't think that would really be a smart idea back then. To say something like that on the street, you might end up in jail. People were bothered, but I think that most realized there wasn't a big chance of us getting rid of them. That feeling was there a little, but mostly because of the language. As native Latvians, we were forced to communicate more in Russian. As kids you don't like that because we had to learn more Russian than Russians had to learn Latvian. Otherwise it was alright. But for all intents and purposes, you grew up a Russian, at least in terms of citizenship? Sandis Ozolinsh: Yeah, definitely. I was in the Russian army for a month. But I got out of it because I played hockey for a military team. And that's another thing: Being under Russian rule probably gave you some hockey opportunities that might have been overlooked otherwise. Sandis Ozolinsh: Definitely. We had it all. We practiced every day. We had coaches. We had anything we wanted. We just ran out straight from school to practice. We'd practice an hour an half, two hours every day. In the summer we'd go to hockey camp. We had everything. We had local coaches. Some imported ones, but we had a lot of local guys. Was hockey king? Sandis Ozolinsh: Hockey was big, but I don't know if it was the most popular. Soccer and basketball are pretty big there. We only had two closed facilities, and everything else was outside. It didn't matter. We didn't care, we were kids. We'd put the skates on and play for hours and enjoy ourselves. School yard rinks and ponds. When you go home, how do people react? You must be a big hero. Sandis Ozolinsh: They treat me pretty well. They don't see me play much, they only hear about me so nobody knows my face so much. They only know my name. We might be a little more reserved than Americans.
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