After only the second track and field meeting of the season, held recently at Marsa, the year is already showing promise.

An event to which only a handful of athletes devote energy and enthusiasm, the triple jump, provided upcoming junior Tamara Vella with an ideal opportunity to better the national mark in her category.

In fact, with only one valid jump, Vella improved the distance she had established in Tours, France, last year by another 14 cms to reach the 11.82m mark.

Earlier in the afternoon meet, the attention was on the sprinting events where many athletes hope to achieve the qualifying standards set by Athletics Malta for selection for the European Indoor Championships, in Paris, in March.

Diane Borg was a whisker away from reaching this standard and, as happened in the first meeting, again posted encouraging times of 7.89 and 7.84 seconds.

In the meantime, Charlene Attard continued with her comeback from injury and this bodes well for the upcoming competitions, particularly the Games of the Small States of Europe.

In the same event for men, Andy Grech and Karl Farrugia clocked identical times of 7.14 and 7.10 seconds when they finished in a dead-heat in both semi-final and final with Rachid Chouhal hot on their heels on both occasions.

Chouhal was also prominent in the long jump where he was only one centimetre short of seven metres.

Rebecca Camilleri, who decided to concentrate only on the long jump, had a very good performance and cleared 6.07 metres.

Encouragingly for Athletics Malta was also the constant good showing of Neil Brimmer. Competing in the 600m event, Brimmer produced a commendable time of 1 minute 23.38 seconds.

Similarly, over the same distance, Celine Pace made a welcome return to competition and stopped the clock at 1 minute 35.0 seconds.