Gold and another record for Chetcuti in Andorra

Andrew Chetcuti broke another record during the second day from the small states of Europe cham-pionships in Andorra on Sunday.

Chetcuti lowered his own time set last year of 23.65 seconds in the 50 metres freestyle by five hundredths of a second. He clocked 23.60.

In the process, Chetcuti won a gold medal to add to the silver he won in the two-lap race on Saturday.

Another new limit of 31.30 seconds was set by Julian Harding in the 50m breaststroke group ‘D’.

HIs time was 0.24 seconds inside the previous mark.

While Chetcuti holds three national and one group ‘D’ records, Harding has seven category marks to his credit, five in group ‘C’ and two in group ‘D’.

The weekend championships were the third in a series of biennial events held a year before the Games of the Small States of Europe which are scheduled for Luxembourg in 2013.

The first was in Luxembourg in 2008, followed by Iceland in 2010.

This year there were 109 swimmers from eight countries, with 33 from Andorra topping the list followed by 23 from Iceland.

Besides Chetcuti and Harding, the other Maltese swimmers in the small nations swimming championships were Andrea M. Agius, Mark Sammut, Matthew Zammit, Shanice Cassar and Nicola Muscat.