The Malta Amateur Athletic Association held its Awards Night at a local hotel last Tuesday.

The association announced its athletes for the year 2005.

The men’s Athlete of the Year title went to Darren Gilford who had established a new national record of 10.54 seconds in the 100m during the MAAA Championships in May.

Fifteen year old Diane Borg who, earlier this year, established a new national record for the 100 metres in a time of 12.11 seconds, a record she established while participating in the IAAF World Youth Championships in Marrakech, won the women’s Athlete of the Year award.

The men’s year’s best performance was that of Rashid Chouhal, who set a new national record of 7.71m in the Long Jump. The women’s 4 x 100 relay team (composed of Therese Mallia, Charlene Attard, Lara Scerri and Diane Borg) who won the silver medal in the GSSE in Andorra in June in a new national record time of 47.48 seconds, won the award for the year’s best technical performance.

Other awards, also based on the year’s best performances were awarded to Jeandre Mallia and Charlene Attard in the Juniors Category; Alistair Bezzina and Lara Scerri in the Intermediate Category.

For the younger athletes, there were awards for Leighton Grech and Diane Borg in the Youths category and Mark Anthony and Julie Grech in the Cadets category.

During his concluding speech, MAAA President Mr. Anthony Chircop thanked the Technical Officials for their assistance during the year. He also reminded all those present that that the association was, on that particular day, writing history since only a few hours earlier the association had aired its first in a series of Television programmes which the MAAA will be producing and showing on Smash Television every Tuesdays with a repetition on Saturdays for the next 28 weeks.