Marcon Bezzina (blue robe) grapples with England’s Faith Pitman. Photo: Paul Zammit Cutajar

Eleonor Bezzina fell just short of a place in the final round of the 10m Air Pistol event for women at the Commonwealth Games, in Scotland, yesterday.

Bezzina produced high scores in all her four rounds during qualifying at the Barry Buddon range with an impressive 96 in her second set being the best for the Maltese markswoman.

She started with a 92 and rounded up her performance with scores of 93 and 92 for a 373 overall. However, Bezzina’s remarkable effort was still not enough to take her into the finals as she finished outside the top eight.

In the general classification, Bezzina was ranked no.13 from an entry of 30 competitors.

The eighth shooter to reach the finals was Dorothy Ludwig on 375 points.

There were two contenders who missed out despite having the same total as Canada’s Ludwig and two others with 373 points who placed ahead of Bezzina only because of a higher score in the opening round.

Singapore’s Shun Xie Teo won the gold medal with 198.6 points (a Games record) as the unheralded Malaika Goel, 16, gave India its first shooting medal at the Games with a silver after an aggregate of 197.1 in the finals.

Ludwig was a distant third with a 117.2 effort.

At the Kelvingrove lawn bowls centre, Leonard Callus and John Parnis showed great form to beat Canada 20-6 and Papua New Guinea 18-16 to move a step away from the quarter-finals.

There has been no dominant team in this round robin Section C so far and the qualified teams for the next stage will be decided today when the remaining ties are played before the last-eight cut is made.

Malta’s last match from the group is against Malaysia who are still in contention for a place in the knock-out stages despite a 14-13 upset to Canada yesterday.

Carmen Spiteri was agonisingly close to chalking up her first win in the women’s lawn bowls singles when she went down 21-20 to Jersey’s Lindsey Greechan.

The Maltese player’s faint hopes of qualification were dashed in the evening when she went down to Catherine McMillen, of Northern Ireland, 21-15.

In women’s judo, Marcon Bezzina was handed a tough task in the -63kgs category quarter-finals after being paired with Cameroon’s Helene Dombeu.

Ranked among the medal favourites before the tournament started, Dombeu lived up to expectations after beating Bezzina in a bout that lasted three minutes and 36 seconds.

Dombeu went on to reach the final but lost the gold medal match to Scottish judoka Sarah Clark.

In repechage, Bezzina lost by ippon to England’s Faith Pitman.

Another competitor representing Malta at the Games yesterday was Jessica Edge in weightlifting.

She was classified 12th in the 53kgs competition won by Chika Amalaha. The Nigerian had a Games record total of 196kgs.

Edge managed a total of 145kgs – 64kgs in snatch and 81kgs in clean and jerk.

Squash results
Plate event: Daniel Zammit Lewis lost to Kale Wilson (Trinidad) 2-3; Kim Borg Cauchi lost to Sarah Taylor (Jersey) 0-3.

Medals table