The Rio Olympics will go down in the annals of our sport as the country’s worst ever showing in the Games since Barcelona 1992.

Having been the Maltese Olympic Committee (MOC) director of sport, responsible for the technical preparation of athletes for nearly 12 years, that is until December 2008, I’m in a good position to give an insight into the objectives set for such top-level competition.

The policy of the MOC was that, for each event, we established achievement standards appropriate to our level and the Games we were competing in.

For four successive Olympics – Atlanta, Sydney, Athens and Beijing – I was directly responsible for the athletes’ preparation and, on two occasions, I was also chef de mission.

Given the extremely high standard at the Olympics, it was evident that vying for a podium place was beyond our reach, with the exception of double trap shooter William Chetcuti.

Chetcuti was, and still is, our only real medal hope at this particular level.

In fact, he was heading in the right direction when, in Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008, (where until then he was the only Maltese athlete to qualify on his own merit) he placed a prestigious eighth... a very good achievement at Olympic level.

However, in London 2012 Chetcuti failed to improve on the results of the previous two Games and, in Rio, he reached his lowest ebb where he could only manage a 17th placing overall.

As for the other athletes the country fielded at the Olympics, in those cases where we could gauge a performance on a fixed parameter (like a time, distance, height, etc), we always had a pre-Games objective of a personal best result and, preferably, a national record.

A closer look at our results in Rio shows the following:

Andrew Chetcuti swam the 100m freestyle 0.21 seconds slower than his PB which is also the national record.

This, technically, isn’t a good result as 0.21 seconds in a 100m race is abysmal. At his national record speed, Chetcuti’s stroke volume was 1.954m per second.

His result in Rio was 1.940m per second. That meant Chetcuti was 1.4m slower than his PB/NR.

Track and field’s Luke Bezzina raced in the 100m and he was 0.37 seconds slower than his PB.

Again, technically this was a poor showing, actually even worse than the swimming. In fact, Bezzina’s stride frequency as per his PB is 9.36m/sec but in Rio his rate went down to 9.06m/sec.

Bezzina was three metres slower in his race at the Olympics.

Charlotte Wingfield was our other track and field representative, also in the 100m.

She was 0.17 of a second slower than her national record. Interpreting this result one finds that her stride frequency was 8.43m/sec in Rio compared to her norm and PB of 8.55m/sec.

This means that Wingfield was 1.4m behind in this race.

Our other swimmer at the Games was Nicola Muscat and she recorded a time that was 0.41 seconds slower than her PB (which is also a national record).

Muscat produced a stroke volume of 1.879m/sec in Rio compared to her norm of 1.91m/sec. This means that Muscat was 2.8m slower in this race.

Shooter Eleanor Bezzina took part in the 10m and 25m air pistol competitions and could only place 22nd (out of 44 competitors) and 36th (out of 40) respectively after managing scores way below her personal best.

Weightlifter Kyle Micallef failed to complete his competition for an embarrassing bottom place.

This clearly shows that it wasn’t only William Chetcuti who performed below par and expectation but all others in the team failed to set new national records which such a competitive arena should spur athletes to achieve.

The MOC is directly responsible for the athletes’ performance at Olympic Games and they have to take responsibility for this failure without giving us any form of excuse/reason.

Really, there are none for such a non-performance. Unfortunately, this is the fifth consecutive time since 2013 where our athletes did not reach the desired standards. The other four occasions in this chain of under-achievements were Luxembourg GSSE, Scotland (Commonwealth), Iceland GSSE and Baku (European Games).

Since 1994, governments have supported the MOC with increasing levels of funding that to date has reached millions of euros.

They have built and improved our sport infrastructure beyond recognition. The funds also provided various synergies to support athletes including having them training full-time and yet, over the past three years our athletes failed to progress.

Here we have the case where our star athlete, instead of reaching his peak 12 years on, has regressed to an unthinkable 17th position.

Proper planning

From a technical perspective, one needs to verify if William Chetcuti did in fact peak too early, namely in the World Cup victory just weeks prior to his trip to Rio.

Did he exhaust his psycho-physical resources during that shoot?

If so, then one needs to learn from this mistake.

In a correct periodisation process, these things do not happen as one lays out the yearly plan, technically known as the YTP, based on where and when you want your athlete to peak in any one season.

So, in the year of an Olympiad, this should have been at the Rio Games and nowhere else.

Sport performances are a very intricate and fickle matter and the slightest of things can affect the final outcome.

In this case, it is very clear that Chetcuti did reach a climax for the season at the wrong time and for the wrong competition.

Elsewhere, where athletes are managed professionally, this does not happen.

Of the six shooters who reached the double trap final in Rio, which was Chetcuti’s declared objective, four did not even take part in the Baku event.

Moreover, of the six finalists in Baku, four did not compete in Rio – this is how you programme an elite athlete.

In conclusion, it’s baffling how our athletes’ poor results did not stir the public’s and, moreso, the media’s attention.

Even more surprising is that on the MOC official website, they report some news from the Rio Games but nothing about the Maltese athletes and their poor results.

Indeed, Rio was yet again a comedy of errors.