Valērijs Kalmikovs

Kalmikovs accepted an athletic scholarship to attend the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he competed for the Nebraska Cornhuskers swimming and diving team under head coach Cal Bentz.[3][4] While swimming for the Cornhuskers, Kalmikovs received a total of nine All-American honors, captured three Big 12 Conference titles, and held four school records in the 100 and 200-yard breaststroke.[5] At the 2000 NCAA Men's Swimming and Diving Championships, during his junior year, Kalmikovs posted a sixth-fastest time of 2:10.64 in the 200-yard breaststroke, where Ed Moses set a new world record.[6] In his senior season, Kalmikovs served as an assistant volunteer coach for the team before he graduated from the University in 2001 with a bachelor of arts degree in international affairs.

Kalmikovs made his official debut, along with his sister Margarita Kalmikova, at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. He failed to reach the top 16 final in two out of his three attempts, finishing twenty-first in the 200 m individual medley (2:06.16), and eighteenth in the 400 m individual medley (4:28.04).[7][8] In his third attempt, 200 m breaststroke, Kalmikovs powered home with a thirteenth-place effort in the B-Final at 2:16.23.[9]

At the 1998 FINA World Championships in Perth, Australia, Kalmikovs placed twenty-second in the 200 m breaststroke (2:21.22), and thirty-eighth in the 200 m individual medley (2:10.28), all from the prelims.[10][11]

At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Kalmikovs decided to drop half of his medley double, and experiment instead with 100 m breaststroke. He achieved FINA B-standards of 1:04.89 (100 m breaststroke), 2:16.30 (200 m breaststroke), and 2:04.83 (200 m individual medley) from the European Championships in Helsinki.[12][13][14] On the first day of the Games, Kalmikovs placed thirty-fourth in the 100 m breaststroke. Swimming in heat four, he enjoyed a sprint finish with Puerto Rico's Arsenio López, as they both hit the wall first in a matching time of 1:04.02.[15][16] Three days later, in the 200 m breaststroke, Kalmikovs established a new Latvian record of 2:16.21 to pull off a nineteenth-place effort from the heats, but missed the semifinal cut by more than half a second (0.50).[17][18][19] In his final event, 200 m individual medley, Kalmikovs placed twenty-fourth on the morning prelims. Swimming again in heat four, he came up short in second place by 0.11 of a second behind New Zealand's Dean Kent in a lifetime best of 2:04.18.[20][21]

At the 2001 FINA World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, Kalmikovs competed only in a breaststroke double. He failed to produce best results for the semifinals in any of his individual events, finishing thirty-fifth in the 100 m breaststroke (1:05.36), and twenty-first in the 200 m breaststroke (2:19.23).[22]

Kalmikovs also sought his bid for his third Olympics in Athens, but forced to drop out from the Games, because of a wrist injury. Shortly after his qualifying bid, he announced his retirement from swimming.

Kalmikovs successfully swam the English Channel on 2019-09-09 in 11 hours and 13 minutes, becoming the first Latvian to do so.[23]