The second in a series of three National Clubs League meetings was held one week after most of the national team athletes returned from their participation in the Luxemburg GSSE.

At the Josy Barthel Stadium, Malta failed to build on their successful performance on the track at the 2011 GSSE edition when the team won four gold medals in Liechtenstein.

It is typical of athletes to suffer from lack of motivation after such an important event but last weekend, they produced some very encouraging results which underline the determination of the big guns to get back on track.

Indeed, one has to mention the depth of athletes fielded by Athleta Pembroke who are leading the clubs classification in both the men’s and women’s categories.

Savio and La Salle are second and third respectively in the men’s table.

There were also some notable individual performances on the track with Diane Borg playing a prominent role.

Borg ran a blistering 24.50 seconds in the 200m for the best technical performance by a female athlete this year.

Despite being sidelined for several months due to injury, Borg’s determination to rediscover her best form is helping her to improve in every race she runs.

In the men’s sprint events, there was a tight duel between Steve Camilleri and Luke Bezzina in both the 100m and 200m. It was Camilleri who emerged victorious in both races in 11.21 and 22.25 seconds respectively.

Another noteworthy showing was that of Matthew Croker in the 400m. Croker again bettered his time after clocking 49.87 seconds while the versatile Nicole Gatt won the women’s event in 59.10secs.

Lara Scerri took first place in the 800m in a time of 2mins 18.83secs, closely followed by Laura Sammut (2mins 20.87secs) who is 10 years her junior.

In the throwing events, Mario Mifsud impressed in the discus (40.89m) and Lawrence Ransley was the leading performer in the shot put (13.58m).

The high jump was closely-contested, ironically, between two horizontal jumpers, Ian Paul Grech and Andrew Cassar Torregiani who both cleared 1.74 metres.

The fireworks continued with Grech achieving his best performance in the long jump to beat the evergreen Rachid Chouhal by a mere centimetre... 7.02m to 7.01m.

A strong contingent of Maltese athletes will head to Banska Bystrica, Slovakia next week for the European Team Athletics Championships (June 22-23).

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