Aleksandrs Miezītis

Aleksandrs Miezītis was born in Rīga into a family of carpenters. He participated in the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm in the lightest division, the featherweight. He was eliminated after two losses in the first rounds. After the Olympics, he moved to Moscow, where he joined the Latvian Riflemen and the Zamoskoretsky Sports Club (ZKS). One year later, he placed third in the All-Russian Olympiad and also third in the 1914 Russian Championship. From 1916, he was the chairman of the Moscow and later the Russian Weightlifting Union. At the 1918 championships, he took two titles, in the bantamweight of Greco-Roman wrestling and in the lightweight of boxing.

After his return to Latvia in 1921, Miezītis was a board member of the Latvian Weightlifting Union and Olympic team coach in weightlifting of the Association of Latvian Sports Organizations. He also worked as a physical education instructor in the police and as a coach for 1. Rīgas Atlētu klubs. Additionally, he presented the morning exercise at Rīga Radiophone. In 1935, he founded a jiu-jitsu club in his hometown.

During World War II, he led physical education and close combat classes at the school of instructors and platoon commanders of the Latvian Legion, part of the German Armed SS. At the end of the war, he left Latvia with retreating German troops but was captured near Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) and died in the Norilsk camp, probably in 1946.