Tight finale in men's race

The Shuttle Road Relay, a MAAA event that pits clubs in a race that vies in stature with the Road Running League, was held last weekend at Marsascala.

Fourteen teams, and some other notable elements hailing from seven clubs, contested the open event for men. The women's relay attracted a less glamorous field but the performance of the winning team, Pembroke Athleta, was itself an outstanding triumph.

The first leg of the men's relay saw Pembroke Athleta temporarily grabbing a 29-second lead over Zurrieq Wolves. Pre-race favourites Mellieha came in fourth in the wake of other strong contenders, St Patrick's AC. AS Libertas, many times winners of this prestigious event, edged out Birkirkara by three seconds for fifth position.

For the second leg, Mellieha brought on Charles Cilia to eclipse Mark Herrera's time by eight seconds, in the process putting his team in front.

John Buhagiar, of Birkirkara, completed his leg in an equal time to Herrera's, to put his team 22 seconds adrift of the leaders.

The third leg saw yet another club posting the fastest time when Michael Gellel (St Patrick's) clocked exactly 16 minutes, with Peter Azzopardi ten seconds behind to keep Mellieha ahead overall.

Now it was the turn of Birkirkara to keep up the pressure on the leaders. Sensing a tough battle ahead, Robert Attard (Mellieha) took off, followed by the one-two challenge from Heitem Kishem (St Patrick's) and James Douglas in hot pursuit.

Thanks to the efforts of his team-mates David Galea, Cilia and Azzopardi, Attard had the luxury of a 51-second lead, but although many viewed that advantage as insurmountable, his rivals had other ideas.

Running neck-and-neck towards the village core, Attard grew visibly larger and Douglas, after overtaking the St Patrick's man, fixed his sight firmly on the Mellieha anchor.

With the gap diminishing steadily, Douglas threw his last energies into a sprint some 100 metres away from the finishing line as Attard shrewdly stuck to his pace. The two came in like a hurricane past the finishing line, a mere two metres between them.

In 15 minutes 9 seconds, Douglas had run the fastest lap of the afternoon for a combined time for Birkirkara of 1:04.02.

Nonetheless, clocking a combined time of 1:04.00, Mellieha demonstrated solid teamwork and all-round individual talents to claim a well-merited victory.

St Patrick's had to settle for third place (1:04.12) ahead of Pembroke (1:05.32) and Zurrieq Wolves (1:06.06).

Easy for Pembroke

Running against three teams from the Ladies Running Club and a St Patrick's formation shorn of its leading runners, the Pembroke foursome took off with Carol Walsh, who, as expected, registered the fastest lap of the day - 17:32.

Lisa Marie Bezzina, Nadia Portelli and Joelle Cortis completed the good work to clock a combined time of 1:14.23 to win by over seven minutes and retain the title they won last year. Pembroke also established a record time for this route in the process.

The result was also a personal triumph for John Walsh. He coaches all four Pembroke runners.