Malta's Ryan Gambin maintained his impressive run since coming to Malta when he again lowered his own mark for the 100m fly event at the Water Cube in Beijing, yesterday.

He clocked 53.7 seconds yesterday to finish sixth in his heat. However, the most satisfying result, failed to push him among the semi-finalists (last 16).

The results in the heats confirmed the high standard at these Games and Gambin certainly made Malta proud and had nothing to be ashamed of.

Satisfying results - MOC

Maltese Chef de Mission Julian Pace Bonello told The Malta Independent that the results of the athletes had been most satisfying so far, even if they had failed to reach the upper levels.

He was obviously referring to William Chetcuti's eighth placing in the Double Trap competition on Tuesday and the two national records broken in the swimming competitions by Madeleine Scerri on Wednesday and Ryan Gambin yesterday.

Said Pace Bonello: "These results show that we have maintained our improvement. Chetcuti's score was better than that he had obtained in Athens and that is why he improved one place. He will now receive a special diploma from the International Olympic Committee (not the MOC) signed by the president himself, Jacques Rogge. This is reserved only for the top eight shooters in the Olympics," he said.

Pace Bonello also said that Scerri's and Gambin's performances in the Water Cube stood out for their new national records. "They both made Malta proud. It was unfortunate that despite such performances, they were still unable to qualify. It was very obvious that the standards in Beijing were very high. Gambin had qualified on his own merit in March in the European Championships in Eindhoven, where he clocked 54.33secs. A few weeks later, he had lowered that time to 53.94 in a Paris international meeting. Now, at the Olympics, he again lowered that time to 53.70, confirming that he could show further improvement in future," he said.