Beijing, China, August 13, 2008 - A win one, lose one and win one path earned Latvia’s Martins Plavins and Aleksandrs Samoilovs one of the top seeds for this weekend’s opening men’s elimination bracket schedule at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games after clinching Pool B here Wednesday evening.

Seeded 23rd in the competition after qualifying 21st for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, Plavins and Samoilovs scored a 21-17, 21-23 and 15-13 win in 63 minutes over 11th-seeded Sascha Heyer and Patrick Hesucher of Switzerland at the 12,200-seat Chaoyang Park Beach Volleyball Ground.

Plavins and Samoilovs finished group play with a 2-1 record after splitting their first two matches with Beach Volleyball pairs from the United States and Argentina. The Latvians are the second and third youngest players in the field at 23 behind China’s 22-year old Xu Linyin.

Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers, the 2007 SWATCH-FIVB “senior’ World Champions, tied the Latvians for the top spot in Pool B. With head-to-head matches breaking two-team ties, the Americans finished second in the pool as Plavins and Samoilovs scored a 21-19 and 21-18 win over Dalhausser and Rogers this past Saturday.

After qualifying for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games as the No. 1 ranked team, Dalhausser and Rogers now have to wait the results of Thursday final pool play matches to learn their first opponent in the elimination rounds as the Americans will not face a team from their pool in the “Sweet 16”, including Heyer and Heuscher.

Other pool winners Wednesday were third-seeded Emanuel Rego and Ricardo Santos of Brazil (Pool C), and fifth-seeded Reinder Nummerdor and Richard Schuil of the Netherlands (Pool E). Emanuel and Ricardo are the defending Olympic champions after defeating Spain’s Javier Bosma and Pablo Herrera for the 2004 Summer Games gold medal.

In a repeat of an Athens 2004 Olympic pool play match, Emanuel and Ricardo scored a 21-14 and 21-17 Pool C win in 44 minutes over 10th-seeded Andrew Schacht and Joshua Slack of Australia. In the Greek Games, the Brazil’s scored a 21-17 and 21-17 victory over the Australians in the second of seven-straight wins in Athens.

Volleyball Olympians competing in their first Summer Games Beach Volleyball event, Nummerdor and Schuil won their third-straight Beijing match with a 21-16 and 21-16 decision in 43 minutes over eighth-seeded David Klemperer and Eric Koreng of Germany.

Six (6) more group matches will be staged Thursday along with two “Lucky Loser’ confrontations to set the field for the 16-team single-elimination bracket to be played Friday and Saturday at Chaoyang Park. The men’s quarter-finals will be held Monday followed by the semi-finals August 20 and the medal matches August 22.

Group leaders heading into Thursday action are top-seeded Wu Penggen/Xu Linyin of China and Pablo Herrera/Raul Mesa of Spain (Pool A), seventh-seeded Jake Gibb/Sean Rosenthal of the United States (Pool F) and 16th-seeded Clemens Doppler/Peter Gartmayer of Austria (Pool D).