Saturday was indeed Malta’s day at the Mediterranean Challenge Cup VIII which was organised by the MTBA at the Eden SuperBowl, St. Julian’s. The Medicup was brought back to Malta to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the MTBA, and the Malta team of four pulled out all of the stops in the most important event of the tournament, the team competition, claiming gold in a fantastic display of team play. Malta were represented by Kenneth Arpa, Mark Spiteri, Sue Abela and Lorraine Casha.

As if not satisfied with that, Sue Abela produced one of the best individual performances of her brilliant career, shooting a 1,374 total over the six games which converts to a tremendous 229 game average. That was enough to give her a second gold in the ladies’ ‘All Events’ division, which had been held by Greek Anastasia Rovithaki since the first event.

In the men’s category, Kenneth Arpa secured bronze in the men’s all events on the very last shot of the tournament, beating Cypriot Costas Kyriakou into fourth place by a mere three pins over a total of 18 games.

Team Malta placed second overall in the Medals Table with their two golds, two singles and three bronze medals, second to Spain on two golds and two silvers. Our four heroes can be extremely proud of their achievements as not only did they scoop the most medals (six), but they also pocketed gold in the two most prestigious categories, the Team event as well as Abela’s All Events title.

Malta remains top of the historical medals table for all eight editions of the Mediterranean Challenge Cup, leading with 18 golds against 17 for Greece.

The Medicup was made possible through the support of Easy Forex, Middlesea Valletta Life Assurance and Kunsill Malti ghal-Isport.