Latvijas Pasts has released a stamp block dedicated to Aļona Ostapenko in collaboration with the most famous Latvian tennis player and the Latvian Tennis Union. The first day cancellation of the new stamp is scheduled to take place in Riga post office No. 50 located in the shopping mall Origo, 2 Stacijas laukums, from 8 AM to 7:30 PM on the 10th of November 2017.
Aļona Ostapenko is a Latvian tennis player who has achieved the greatest success: she is the winner of the 2017 French Open Singles Tournament and the winner of the 2017 WTA (Women's Tennis Association) International Tournaments in Seoul. On the 9th of October 2017 A.Ostapenko attained the seventh spot in the WTA rankings, which is the best place in her career so far, and this is the highest place ever taken by a Latvian tennis player in individual rankings.
The new stamp has been issued as a special block and it features the moment of triumph of A.Ostapenko, holding the Cup of the 2017 French Open Singles Tournament, as well as a description of the greatest achievements of the tennis player in 2017. The release of the stamp block is accompanied by the issue of a special cover.
It is not a common practice in the world to release official stamps related to the success attained in the world of tennis, and in Latvia this stamp has been issued for the first time too. A.Ostapenko, commenting on the release of the stamp dedicated to her in Latvia, points out that she is very happy about this fact: “I realise that it is a great and unique honour to have my own postage stamp”.
In turn, Mārcis Vilcāns, Chairman of the Board of Latvijas Pasts, expresses his satisfaction with the opportunity to devote a stamp to the outstanding tennis player. "It is not easy to plan the issue of postage stamps dedicated to athletes, because achievements tend to be sudden or changeable and not in all countries postal administrations are capable of responding quickly to them. However, we have managed to create a series of stamps for young talented Latvian athletes still this year, and the first star in this series is Aļona Ostapenko. The new stamp block is a contribution of Latvijas Pasts to bringing the name of Latvia into the world, recalling once again the success of our great tennis player on the global scale”.
The face value of the stamp block devoted to A.Ostapenko is € 1.42, which corresponds to the cost of sending a registered Class A letter within Latvia, and its print run is 50,000 copies. In turn, the print run of the cover is 1,500 copies.
