Chris Camilleri returned from the ICF Canoeing Flatwater Racing World Championships held in Zagreb, Croatia last week.

Camilleri started his visit with a short training camp which enabled him to perform the final preparation under the supervision of the ICF Technical Director. The ICF were quite impressed with the local athlete as he was well prepared for the challenge and with his height of 196cm he also possesses the ideal physical characteristics for the K1 kayak sprints discipline.

When the time came to face the real competition given the level of the tournament, Chris raced with great athletes some of whom have already won top level kayak sprint competition such as Adam van Koeverden (Canada - 2004 Olympics Bronze K1 1000m /Gold K1 500m) in the 1000 metre heats, and Lutz Altepost(Germany), Stjepan Janic (Croatia) and Andrea Facchin (Italy) in

the 500 metres event. In the K1 1000 metres event Camilleri managed to clock a time of 4m 20.383s to beat Paraguay, Dominican Republic and El Salvador.

A similar placing was achieved in the K1 500 metre heats where Camilleri with a time of 2m 15.179s was better than Malaysia, El Salvador and Senegal. Camilleri was also involved in a curious incident in the 200 metres sprint when after performing an excellent start, he was tipped off his kayak by the wake of the press boat to the disappointment of all. The press boat was actually not allowed to film from besides the athletes in the races that followed. It was a pity that Camilleri was not allowed to qualify again as the incident happened in the last session of the heats.

The athletes that Camilleri managed to beat in the general classification represent nations in which canoeing is still developing but it can be considered at a more advanced level than that of the local athletes as some of these athletes have been practising competitive sprint canoeing for a number of years. This is very encouraging as Camilleri started practicing seriously for competition just over ten months ago.

Camilleri will now continue his training programme and the next event in which he will participate will be the national sprint championships being held in Autumn. He also will start a programme leading him to a better preparation for the 2006 World Championships that are being held in Hungary.