The Malta Weightlifting Association enjoyed great success at the Vladan Mihajlovic Tournament in Serbia as Maltese lifters returned home with two gold and one silver medal.

The team, consisting of Yazmin Zammit Stevens, Elisia Scicluna and Vlad Baldacchino, took the platform on Saturday alongside athletes from Serbia, Bosnia, Spain, Bulgaria, Georgia, Slovenia and Romania.

Scicluna (-90kg) entered competition not fully fit after suffering a minor injury a few days ahed of competition and decided not to risk any further damage with maximum lifts.

She finished with a comfortable 72kg snatch and 92kg clean and jerk to finish off in first place in her weight category.

Zammit Stevens also sweeped to the gold medal in the -75kg category.

Even though she weighed in the lightest at 69.7kg, she outlifted her competitors with an 80kg snatch and 99kg clean and jerk for a 179kg total, breaking one national record in the process.

Her success in Serbia will surely boost Zammit Stevens ahead of her participation at the Mediterranean Games which will be held in Tarragona, in June.

In the men’s competition, Vlad Baldacchino (-94kg) had a stellar performance, breaking his own national record in the snatch with 128kg, and also improving his own clean and jerk competition best by six kilogrammes with a 158kg clean and jerk.

He totalled 286kg to set a new national record in the 94kg category and place second overall. Surely, this result shows that Baldacchino is on the right track ahead of his participation in the European U-23 Championships later on this year.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.