Maltese swimmers maintain upward trend in Berlin
Zammit and Micallef set age-group records
A group of 34 swimmers from Neptunes and three from the Marsascala-based IASIS club, aged between 10 and 21 years, recently took part in an international meet at the SSE Swimming Complex in Berlin.
The high-level meet attracted swimmers from 64 clubs based in Germany, Poland, Denmark and Great Britain besides Malta. The Maltese squad was under the guidance of Neptunes head coach Gail Rizzo who was assisted by Mark Buttigieg and Monique Mangion.
It was a fruitful experience for the Neptunes and IASIS swimmers whose encouraging results in Berlin went a long way towards rewarding their hard training and dedication.
Sarah Demicoli, Matthias Azzopardi, Amy Micallef, Matthew Zammit and Michael Umnov were among the medal winners in Berlin as all the Maltese swimmers recorded personal bests, the Aquatic Sports Association (ASA) said in a statement.
Furthermore, the highly pro-mising Neptunes duo of Zammit and Micallef shattered a spate of age-group records.
Zammit set a new age-group C record in the 50m breaststroke when clocking 0:32.66 seconds. The previous record, 0:32.79, was set by Daniel Galea two years ago. Swimming in the 100m butterfly event, Zammit bettered his own age-group record of 1:03.59 when covering the race in 1:02.78.
Micallef established three new age-group B marks in Berlin. She shaved 1.32 seconds off her 100m breast mark when clocking 1:20.07. The Neptunes swimmer’s time of 2:52.76 in the 200m breast was almost 10 seconds faster than her previous record while in the 50m butterfly, Micallef stopped the clocks at 0:33.62 to improve her best mark of 0:33.89 set in May this year.
After their successful participation in Berlin, the swimmers will resume their training schedule after the New Year in preparation for the annual ASA Easter International Swimming Meet, to be held at the National Pool in April.