Over 300 athletes from 19 countries will be in Malta on June 11 to take part in the inaugural Athletics Championships for Small States.
Edwin Attard, president of the Malta Amateur Athletics Association (MAAA), told a news conference yesterday that his association was proud to be hosting the first edition of these championships which are intended to fill the void left by the Euro Team Championships. The latter event is not held during an Olympic year.
The June 11 meet will feature all the countries in the European Division Three which comprises the GSSE states along with bigger nations such as Moldova, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Bosnia and Slovakia.
“These championships have been five years in the making,” Attard said.
“I had made a suggestion to former EAA president Hansjoerg Wirz but the European body had not taken a definitive stand on the proposal at the time.
“Last year, the championships were again proposed and Luxembourg agreed to host the opening edition only to pull out a few months ago.
“Wirz again contacted me to ask if we were interested to host the event and I accepted as I believe that these championships will be very beneficial for small European countries like Malta.”
Attard said the championships will present a formidable organisational challenge as all 22 events in both the men’s and the women’s categories must be held on the same day.
“The championships schedule is very hectic as we will have over 40 judges apart from several volunteers who will assist us in the organisation,” the MAAA head said.
Malta will be fielding a very strong contingent with Attard hopeful that our athletes can achieve a very positive result.
“We have high hopes that our athletes will produce some excellent results,” Attard said.
“Our team will be spearheaded by our leading performers such as Kevin Moore, Charlotte Wingfield and Janet Richard.
“We have no doubt that these athletes will obtain some great results in these championships.
“In the last few weeks, we had a group of middle-distance runners who went on a high altitude training camp in France thanks to the MOC and the early signs look very promising as most of these athletes have clocked some very fast times.”
Attard said a novelty in the championships programme at Marsa will be the introduction of the Swedish relay.
“The Swedish relay is a new concept that will be tested in these championships,” Attard said. “The relay consists of four legs of 100m, 200m, 300m and 400m respectively.
“I’m sure that this discipline will prove very popular with the spectators.”
Also present for the news conference was Chris Agius, the Parliamentary Secretary for Youth and Sport, who praised the MAAA’s initiative in bringing the inaugural edition of these championships to our country.
“This year, SportMalta has assisted the MAAA to upgrade their facilities at the Matthew Micallef St John Stadium as the warm-up area, the dressing rooms and the stands were given a facelift,” Agius said.
“This is just the first step as we are planning to renovate the Marsa Sports Complex facilities. We believe that the Marsa Sports Complex has great potential to attract overseas teams from various sporting disciplines to conduct training camps during the winter months.”