I would like to apologise to Ryan Gambin (My Records Are My Achievements, April 2) for making him feel the need to defend himself. My letter was not a personal attack on him, but rather an eye-opener for the Maltese people to not just see the pros, but also the cons of bringing athletes of Maltese descent over to represent our country. In fact, I did not mention Mr Gambin in my analysis of the situation and the picture that accompanied the letter was not sent in by me.

Mr Gambin should not feel the need to defend his position here, indeed if given the chance I'm sure most athletes would have done likewise. I thank him for sharing with us the amount of obstacles that he has had to overcome to achieve his goals and he should feel proud to have achieved them on his own merit.

Indeed, as Mr Gambin rightly highlighted in his previous letter, sports is about dedication and rising to challenges. In fact, I was quite moved when I read in The Daily Telegraph which interviewed Mr Gambin that he had momentarily quit swimming when he realised Australia had nothing to offer him in terms of Olympic goals and I am glad that his talents have not been wasted through lack of incentive. I hope that the athletes who have grown up here will also keep finding motives for them to keep progressing.

I do not wish to enter into a cat and mouse game with Mr Gambin and even though I can back up every allegation of "false information" that he claims I put forward by wrongly assuming that most examples used in my previous letter were referring to him, my aim was not to victimise anybody as this only distracts the readers from the true topic that I always intended to put forward, which is that of the future of sports in Malta. If Mr Gambin really does have the future of Maltese sports at heart, which I have no doubt he does, let us drop this petty discourse and instead constructively discuss ways of improving sports on our island.