This year’s traditional Easter International Meeting, again sponsored by Klikk, proved to be another fruitfulstepping stone towards more progress for several Maltese swimmers, mostly those representing the ASA squad, as five new national limits were set in team events.

The races, held over five sessions from Thursday to Saturday, drew about 350 swimmers from 12 teams, three overseas and nine local, which included the Paralympic Swimming group.

The highlights of the event, watched by a sizeable crowd at Tal-Qroqq’s Swimming Complex, were the men’s and women’s medley and freestyle relay races, two of which were swum by composite male and female swimmers.

Aside of the established Andrew Chetcuti, Raoul Stafrace and now Matthew Galea, the men’s squad also included Gabriel Dimech.

This team managed to improve last April’s national mark of 3:32.87 when clocking 3:30.93 for the 4x100 freestyle relay race.

Not to be outdone, the women’s quartet, with young newcomers Francesca Falzon Young (born 2001) and Kimberley Castelletti, teaming up with thoroughbreds Nicola Muscat and Amy Micallef, broke the four-minute barrier for the first time in the 4x100 freestyle relay when they stopped the watches on 3:59.86 to clip 1.26secs off the previous mark set in Liechtenstein five years ago.

Charis Ceccarelli then joined Falzon Young, Micallef and Muscat to shave 1.66 seconds off the seven-year-old 4x100 relay medley limit when they swam the race in 4:33.26 seconds.

The other two team records were set in the mixed relays.

The first was in the 4x100 freestyle when the quartet, made up of Chetcuti, Stafrace, Falzon Young and Muscat, stormed to the finish in 3:43.16 which was 1.45 seconds faster than the previous best.

In the last race on Saturday, the 4x100 medley team clocked 4:11.73 to beat the old mark set at the corresponding meeting a year ago by 5.09 seconds.

National team coach Artem Goncharenko. Photos: Wally Galea

The four swimmers were Falzon Young, Michael Stafrace, Chetcuti and Muscat.

It was very satisfying to see some young faces like Falzon Young, Castelletti and Ceccarelli emerging in a changing ASA national team regime now under the charge of Artem Goncharenko.

The Ukrainian, who replaced Neptunes-bound head coach Andy Colbourn, looked very pleased when acknowledging the swimmers’ performances over the past week.

“Competitions were at a high level,” he said.

“All were keen to show good results in an Olympic year. The healthy atmosphere in the team has helped to achieve the best results in the relays where records were broken.

“I thank all the swimmers in the squad for their performances and hope this is just the beginning on the way to more improvement.”

For statistical purposes the best individual technical achievements by Maltese swimmers according to the new International Points Score (IPS) were in the 100 freestyle for men and women, with Chetcuti (51.29 – 765 points) and Muscat (58.39 – 709 points) coming out tops.