History
Led by famous Latvian basketball player and coach Olgerts "Bohums" Altbergs, TTT Riga conquered its first European title in 1960, winning the European Cup for Women's Champion Clubs (since 1992 known as Euroleague Women). Dzidra Uztupe-Karamiseva, Vita Silina-Luka (Karpova), Dzintra Kiepe-Baka and other outstanding players of the time bring women basketball to new levels. Seventeen more European titles were added during next 22 years – achievement unequalled until this day.
Rise of Uljana (Juliana) Semjonova, joining TTT Riga in 1965, at the age of 13, confirmed golden status of „TTT". From 1964 to 1975 TTT earned 12 consecutive European titles. In 18 seasons of international competition Uljana Semjonova never lost a game in national team competition, a record that will almost certainly never be repeated.
Late 1980s and 1990s marked decline of once famous club. Best Latvian players, with Semojonova being the first one, continued their professional careers in France, Spain and Italy. It took ten years after Latvia regained independence, while TTT re-entered Liliana Ronchetti cup in 2001. Next entry followed only five years later.
Autumn of 2006 was a turning point in history of the club. New leadership and new management launched long term work to unite best Latvian players under the famous club name, first foreign internationals – like Brazilian and WNBA star Iziane Castro Marques – came to Latvia. In the spring of 2007 TTT Riga after one year silence regained Latvian title and applied for the participation in FIBA Euroleague Women. Season of 2007–2008 will be the 50th for the club.
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“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)