Maltese aiming for national records

Four Pembroke Athleta Kyocera athletes will tomorrow be taking part in the Birmingham Games to be held at the National Indoor Arena, the venue of last year's World Indoor Championships.

Although Rebecca Camilleri, Darren Gilford, Celine Pace and Stefan Mohnani will be using this event primarily to gain more experience at competing in an indoor environment, all four have made the setting of new personal bests their main target. And since in some cases these bests also happen to be national records, it follows that there is the real possibility of registering new records as well.

So far, most athletes have taken part in the two pre-season meetings organised by the MAAA. Even though the outdoor conditions greatly vary from those held under cover, all performed creditably.

Jivko Jetchev, who coaches three of the athletes, will accompany the group and is confident that they can improve on those results.

"I am expecting personal bests and records from all of them," Jetchev said. "Darren's best result over 60m is 6.78sec with wind assistance of 2.1m and very cold weather. I am expecting the same result in his first indoors competition."

Indeed such a result would be an improvement on Gilford's current personal best (6.87sec) in an indoor arena that was set at last year's World Indoor Championships.

"In the long jump Rebecca is the record holder with 5.95m," continued the Pembroke Athleta coach.

"The expectation from her is 6.00m. Stefan has 6.66m and he should be around 6.80-7.00m.

"Hopefully these two jumpers will do well, because they didn't have the chance to use the long jump pit at Marsa track due to reseeding of the ground."

Celine Pace has a similar objective. "My aim is simple: to get a personal best which is currently 8.01."

International exposure

Competing in international events is fundamental in the athletes' development as Jetchev confirmed. "All of the athletes need to gather more international experience competing abroad and to meet athletes of their level or higher."

Camilleri echoes those sentiments. "I believe that the key to progressing in my event is more frequent participation in international events," as did Stefan Mohnani who said: "Competition overseas is very important for us since locally, competition is limited."