Eleanor Bezzina is Malta's flag bearer

Four athletes will be representing Malta in the forthcoming European Games in Minsk. This second edition of the European Games will start on 21 June and finish on the 30^th of June. Malta's contingent of four athletes will be the smallest one of the participating countries, with hosts Belarus having the largest contingent with 221 athletes.

The four athletes representing Malta will Eleanor Bezzina who will be competing in the Precision Pistol from 25m, Alexander Smyth competing in the men's cycling road race event, Jeremy Saywell in the Judo -66kg category, and Mikaela Galea who will compete in the Women's Trap shooting event.

Eleanor Bezzina a fresh winner of the gold medal in the Precision Pistol from 10m in Montenegro, will be our flag bearer during the opening ceremony. Details were given yesterday by the Malta Olympic Committee during a press conference.

Bezzina said that the competition level in Minsk will be very high, with the best five in the world among the 24 competitors in the 10m event. She said that she is in good form and will do her utmost to get valuable points to obtain qualification for the Olympic Games in Tokyo next year.

This press conference focussed on these European Games in Minsk, and also as a post-mortem of the Small Nations Games held some two weeks ago in Montenegro. Director of Sports Ivan Balzan, MOC President Julian Pace Bonello, and GSSE Chef de Mission Paul Sultana addressed the press during this briefing.

Sports Director Ivan Balzan said that the results obtained in Montenegro were positive ones with an increase in the number of gold medals won, now up to six. He said that without injuries, especially the one to Matthew Asciak in tennis, more medals could have easily been won and we would have improved on the tally obtained two years ago in San Marino.

However he said that many young athletes were given their first experience, especially in Judo and Table-Tennis and this augurs well for our main target which will be the games being held in Malta in 2023.

Chef de Mission Paul Sultana said that there were some logistics problems in Montenegro especially in the athletic track, which was not even ready for the games. Sultana however praised the facilities at the athletes village in the city of Budva, and also thanked all athletes and the MOC delegation for their professional approach and behaviour during the stay in Montenegro.

Paul Sultana also thanked Sports Malta and CEO Mark Cutajar for their continuous support to the MOC.

Finally President Julian Pace Bonello thanked the medical team for their hard work in Montenegro. He said that the results obtained were the expected ones and could have been better without the already mentioned injury to Matthew Asciak.   

He however remarked that each and every federation needs to work very hard if we want to reach our set targets for the Malta edition of the Small Nations Games in four years' time.