The 14th Mediterranean Cham-pionships, at the Bowling Ped-ralbes Centre in Barcelona, came to a close last weekend.
Sue Abela, winner of two gold medals in singles and doubles, was Malta’s only hope of a medal on the final day when the Masters finals were played.
In the end, she walked off with a bronze medal but could so easily have gone all the way after her stunning performance during the qualifying events.
Malta finished sixth from 13 nations in the competition for teams. After that each player’s qualifying totals, along with the tallies from the singles and doubles events, were pooled together to decide the All Events classifications, from which the top eight would qualify to the Masters.
Abela’s inspired overall performance over her 18 qualifying games meant she easily topped the ladies’ All Events table on 3,771 pins, 302 clear of Israel’s Solene Goron in second place.
However, Tiziana Carannante had to be content with 17th place on 3,161.
Neither Mark Sullivan nor Neil Sullivan made the top eight in the men’s standings, although Spiteri only just missed out on a place in the finals, finishing 10th on 3,550, just 28 pins down on the eighth spot. Sullivan wasn’t far behind either, placing 12th on 3,500.
Abela’s first match was against eighth seed Rhona Gill from Israel.
The Malta champion had little trouble in seeing her opponent off, taking the opening game 236-201, and then securing her pass to the semi-finals with a 212-165 game two win.
Abela then faced Catalan bowler Sandra Torrents. She suffered a low 173 in the opener to go one down, but levelled matters with a better 212-193 equaliser to force a decider.
That turned out to be an absolute nail-biter, going down to the wire, with Abela losing out by a mere three pins (201-204), having to settle for third place and a bronze medal.
The competition was eventually won by Niki Sciza from Cyprus. She beat Torrents 2-0 in the final match.
The men’s event was won by Italian Marco Reviglio.
Team Malta’s latest performance in these championships means that the country’s overall lead in the all-time medals table has been extended to 29 golds, four better than nearest rivals Greece.
Italy are back in third on 12 golds.