Other events in Baltic States

The Latvian national men's basketball will play in one of the three Olympic qualifying tournament's this summer, informs LETA, referring to the International Basketball Federation (FIBA).

Latvia gained the right to participate in one of the three qualifying tournaments after it was announced yesterday that Italy, the Philippines and Serbia have been chosen to host the tournaments.

Since Italy and Serbia had already automatically qualified for the Rio qualifying tournament, the teams placed eighth and ninth (Latvia and Croatia) also earned qualification berths.

Each Olympic qualifying tournament will consist of six participating teams, with the winning team from each event earning a berth for the Men's Olympic Basketball Tournament at the Rio Games.

The qualification tournaments will be played between July 4 to 19.

The draw for the three qualification groups will take place on January 26 in Mies.

Participating in the Olympic qualifying tournaments will be the following countries: New Zealand, Angola, Tunisia, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, France, Serbia, Greece, Italy, the Philippines, Iran, Japan, Lebanon, Latvia and Croatia. Turkey was also invited.

The teams that have already qualified for the Rio Olympics are: United States, Brazil, Australia, Venezuela, Argentina, Nigeria, Spain, Lithuania and China.

The Latvian team has also earned automatic qualification to the 2017 European Men's Basketball Championships.

Latvia finished in 8th place at last year's European Men's Basketball Championships.