The Malta Amateur Athletic Association (MAAA) will be holding the 2013 National Championships at Marsa between today and tomorrow.

This year’s championships are particularly interesting since a good number of our athletes have yet to attain GSSE MQSs while those already through will try to improve on their best performances.

Diane Borg is one of the athletes who has obtained the necessary qualifying standard for Luxembourg in the 200m although she is still some half-a-second out of her own record.

She will definitely try to rectify this tomorrow.

Rebecca Camilleri has also obtained her MQS in the long jump. She cleared 6.12m recently when the limit required was 6.09m.

Rebecca Sare will be participating in the GSSE for the first time as she succeeded in securing qualification to the triple jump with her best effort of 12.08m.

For Sare, this is a breakthrough and she has good reason to be satisfied with her recent performances.

Giselle Camilleri, currently living abroad, has registered a time of 17:33.0 for the 5,000m beating the MQS for this event by no fewer than 12 seconds.

The men’s 4x100m relay team, composed of Andy Grech, Rashid Chouhal, Luke Bezzina and Steve Camilleri, have improved on their baton changing technique and also managed to qualify when they clocked 41.80 seconds earlier this month.

The women’s 4x100m relay team (composed of Diane Borg, Rebecca Camilleri, Nicole Gatt and Robyn Zammit), too, had booked their flight to Luxembourg when they registered 47.08s at the Malta International Meet two weeks ago.

Another athlete who is pushing hard to achieve his MQS is Mark Herrera. Last week, he registered a time of 4:01 in the 1,500m.

In the throwing events we have been seeing some very good efforts recently from Lawrence Ransley (who again established a new record in the shot put last Saturday), Mario Mifsud in the discus, Bradley Mifsud in the javelin and Antonella Chouhal in both hammer and discus.

Ian Grech is showing a lot of promise in the triple jump and another young athlete oozing confidence in the 1,500m and 3,000m events is Laura Sammut,14.

Kevin Moore, the sprinter who lives in Australia and who has represented the country down under in past years, has just arrived in Malta so that he would be able to run in the MAAA championships this weekend.

Moore is currently running the 400m in 48 seconds.

The first event today will start at 2pm.