Malta teens scoop medals in Ajaccio

The 17th edition of the Islands Games for youths came to a close in Ajaccio, Corsica, on Friday with the budding Maltese athletes involved performing admirably and making the country proud with a string of remarkable results.

Athletics Malta had four girls and seven boys in their team.

On the first day, following a mishap when sprinter Nicholas Mallia revived an old injury, things started looking brighter with two sprinters, Nicole Gatt and Nadine Gatt, making it to the final.

Then came the first medal of the Games for the country when Brad-ley Mifsud took silver with a good jump of 6.39m.

Mifsud repeated his feat in the javelin event. On the last day of competition his throw of 47.10m gained him another second placing.

The field events had another double winner in Luke Farrugia, who made the third spot in the shot putt on the first day and he followed that success with a gold in the discus on day two. His best efforts were 12.84m and 44.59m respectively.

Nicole Gatt proved her mettle with another two individual awards in these Games, a gold in the 400 metres (timed at 58.54 seconds) followed by a bronze in the 200 metres.

At the lower end of the age eligibility, Laura Sammut, at her first time of asking, came away with an individual gold in the 3,000m (11:49.84) where her tactical race belied her young age.

Sammut also grabbed a silverin the classic 1,500m, clocking 5:03.74 minutes.

Janet Richard, with a time of 59.29secs in the 400m, was the other bronze winner.

To cap it all, and for each girl to bring home precious metal, Sam-mut, Richard and a superb Nicole Gatt ran a spirited relay medley to hand their other member in the team, Nadine Gatt, a deserved, shared silver medal.

Other Athletics Malta members in Ajacco were Andrea and Matthias Cristiano, Luke Camilleri and Samuel Grech.

Swimmers’ and gymnasts’ exploits

The swimming squad will be returning home with eight medals from the Island Games.

The group, made up of Jordan Calleja, Gabriel Dimech, Neil Muscat, Michael Stafrace, Alex Turnbull, Andrea Bellia, and Lara and Sandra Demicoli, managed to obtain third and fourth places overall in the boys and girls’ points team aggregate out of the ten countries in competition.

Muscat won the 50 butterfly race and he also had three bronze medals in the 50 and 100 back-stroke and 50 freestyle, while Bellia won two bronze medals in the 50 and 100 butterfly.

The boys’ 4x100 relay and medley quartets won a bronze medal in the respective events.

Remarkable results were also obtained by the gym-nastics team, coached by Albert Chun and Plamen Peynov.

In fact, Claire Azzopardi, Suzanne Buttigieg, Peppijna Dalli and Sana Grillo combined per-fectly to finish second behind Corsica and ahead of Sicily while Ryan Busuttil claimed a third place in his event.

In the apparatus final, Dalli was the best gymnast on uneven bars with a high 11.75 points, way above the 2009 GSSE silver medallist’s score.

Buttigieg was also a gold medal winner on floor and she added a silver on beam.

The medals won augur well for the future of the sport in our country and make all Malta proud, not least the athletes, their associations and the MOC.