In bobsleigh everything begins with hundredths of a second, but this story began in Ventspils – Sandis Prūsis was born there on 24 October 1965. From Ugāle Secondary School and an athletics hall he rose to become Latvia’s leading bobsleigh pilot after restored independence: in 1994 at Winterberg he won Latvia’s first World Cup victory, carried the Latvian flag at the 1998 Nagano Games, and later led the national team for almost twenty years as coach.

After the restoration of independence, Latvian bobsleigh had to return to the world circuit with its own flag, crews, and equipment. Prūsis stood at the center of that transition, first as a pilot and later as a coach – under his leadership Oskars Melbārdis’s four-man crew became Olympic champions in Sochi.