Golf team slips to ninth place

The Maltese golf team at the Miglianico Club in Pescara slipped two positions down to ninth after the second day of the tournament and 36 holes played.

Andy Borg slightly improved his score to 74 (two over) yesterday but Chris Bergedahl could not manage better than 83 (11 over).

Their combined score in the team event is now 311 (23 over), way behind leaders France (284, four under) and Turkey (286, two under). Italy are third (288, par).

The other Maltese golfer at the Med. Games, John J. Micallef Verelst, is 33rd overall after returning with a score of 89 (17 over) to fall 28 holes behind par in the individual event.

Borg is 15th (149, five over) and Bergedahl 26th (162, 18 over).

The next 18 holes will be played today and the remaining 18 tomorrow.

At the Touristic Port, lack of wind again played havoc with the sailing events as only one from the scheduled three races was completed.

In Laser Radial, Maya Podesta was 12th in the opening regatta of the day, won by gold medal favourite Sophie de Turckheim, of France.

The other race was suspended midway through with Podesta in 13th place, her current position in the overall classification.

Sailing competitions will be completed on Saturday.

Late in the afternoon, sprinter Nicolai Portelli took part in the 200m semi-finals and finished sixth in his heat ahead of Italy's Teo Turchi and Darko Raicevic, of Montenegro.

Portelli's time was 21.77 seconds, slightly slower than his personal best for the distance which is 21.63. He won a silver medal in the GSSE last month.

Today, Portelli takes part in the 100m semi-finals.

The women's basketball team played their first match from the 5th-7th place pool in the evening and went down to Albania 73-69 (21-19, 15-12, 22-13, 15-25).

The Maltese again showed great resilience to stay in the match until half-time which saw Albania leading 36-31. They failed to keep up the pace in the third quarter, which they lost 22-13, but hit back admirably in the last 10-minute session only to fall short of target by four points.

Rebecca Brincat Thoresen was the top scorer of the match with 31 points and Josephine Grima added another 20 for Malta.

Today, Santino Coppa's girls will have to beat Turkey to avoid bottom place in the overall classification.

Shooting events

All eyes will be focused on William Chetcuti today when the Malta champion shoots in the Double Trap competition which will be held over one day at the Manoppello Range.

With only seven entries on the starting list, Chetcuti, 24, starts favourite to make the barrage final and, perhaps, improve on his bronze medal in Almeria .

The gold medallist in 2005, Marco Innocenti, of Italy, is not taking part but runner-up Daniele Di Spigno will be looking to go one step higher on the winners' podium this afternoon.

The two-day men's skeet competition gets under way this morning with the opening three rounds of 25 clays.

Clive Farrugia will be making his Med. Games debut in the 19-man event that also features 2005 gold medal winner Ennio Falco (Italy) and bronze medallist Georgios Archilleos (Cyprus).

In bowls, David Farrugia continues his Pescara 2009 experience by playing in the raffa singles after elimination from the doubles earlier in the week.

Farrugia plays three matches from the qualifying pool today.

His opponents are Matteo Albani (San Marino), Sadok Zaidi (Tunisia) and Miroslav Petkovic (Monte-negro).

The top two in the group qualify for the semi-finals.