At age 14, Margarita "Rita" Kalmikova knew little of the word Olympian.
"My coach had to explain to me what the Olympics were," Kalmikova said.
It was after that conversation with her swimming coach she realized the magnitude of her potential.
"The idea of representing my country and being an Olympian was everything a 14-year-old could dream
of," Kalmikova said.
She went on to become the youngest person to compete for her home country of Latvia in the 1996 Atlanta
Games.
Kalmikova, now a graduate student at Bowling Green State University, began swimming competitively in
fifth grade.
"I was a big slacker. I would always try to find a way to skip and not to train hard," she
said.
But the excuses stopped one day when she injured herself playing with friends and was supposed to be at
swim practice.
It was that dreaded phone call to her parents that inspired her to take her training to an elite level.

"I said to my parents, ‘I will never disappoint you again.’"
From there, she started training more aggressively and showed signs of promise. Back then, an "easy
day" meant 5 1/2 hours in the pool, plus additional hours doing dry land training. She also had to
forego the traditional school route and home school herself.
Kalmikova qualified for the 1996 Summer Games at age 15. Her Olympic bid came at the very last
qualification meet.
"I knew everything was on the line and I swam my heart out," she said.
In the 1996 Olympics, Kalmikova was one of four athletes in the Latvian contingent. Her older brother,
Val Kalmikovs was also on the team.
"My dad used to joke and say, ‘My kids are half the team,’" Kalmikova said.
The pair swam the same event in the Games, the 200 meter breaststroke.
As a 15-year-old, Kalmikova admitted the competition was overwhelming.
"I remember I was so nervous when they called my name I thought to myself, ‘That sounds familiar,’
so I looked around for Margarita Kalmikova and then I realized it was me."
Kalmikova swam the race right around her best time, but did not move on to the next round. She took 34th
place.
Following the 1996 Games, she continued swimming at the elite level, but she came to a make or break
point following an injury.
"Do I go and try regular life or do I commit myself to this sport," she said.
She opted for the latter and changed swimming coaches, her training regiment, diet and technique.
Kalmikova qualified for her second Games in March of 2000.
"That was probably the happiest moment of my career because it wasn’t just about going, it was also
proving to other people if you work hard you can succeed."
In Sydney, Kalmikova finished 28th and set a national record for Latvia in the same event.
At age 21, she came to the U.S. after being recruited to swim at the collegiate level.
She settled on Lewis University, a Division II school 30 minutes southwest of Chicago, where education
was her priority.
Kalmikova, who now speaks fluent Russian, Latvian, and English, said she knew very little of the native
language when she arrived here.
"For the first month, I didn’t speak, I just listened. But once I started, people couldn’t shut me
up."
During her collegiate career, Kalmikova took second at the NCAA finals, broke school and conference
records and was a repeat All-American.
After graduation from Lewis, where she majored in human communication and business management, Kalmikova
set her sights on the other side of the coin – coaching.
Her first coaching job was at a small Division III university in upstate New York. She later went on to
become an assistant swimming coach at Western Kentucky University in 2007.
"As a coach, you put your needs aside completely. You breathe the team, you live the team."
In 2011, Kalmikova had the opportunity to become a head swimming coach.
"But, for many reasons including my personal and professional life, Bowling Green became my
reality."
Kalmikova, now 31, is a second-year graduate student at BGSU studying sport administration. She is also a
volunteer assistant for BGSU’s swim team, the graduate assistant for aquatics at the Student Recreation
Center, and coaches the Wood Lane Special Olympics swim team.
She hopes to one day open her own swim school.
"I just hope I’ll be able to give back to the sport and the community which have given so much to
me."