With the Seniors breaking off their season until January it was business as usual for the other categories when last Sunday, after three encounters on the road, they entered into the second phase devoted to Cross Country.

In this new format, competing athletes have to participate in at least two road races and two cross-country events to feature in the final classification.

In the cadet section for children born 1994 and 1995 Amy Abdilla (Pembroke Athleta) and Christian Luke Chetcuti (Allcomers Aloysians) lead the field at the end of the first three events and both consolidated their lead by being the winners, covering the 2km grass course in 8.15 and 7.22 minutes respectively.

In the Youth category, girls, it is a much closer contest with pre-race top position shared equally between Pembroke Athleta front runners Denise Law and Jana Pace Cocks.

In the latest event, the latter edged out her teammate to grab a slender one-point lead. Over this 3 km course, Jana’s time was 4 seconds better at 13.38 minutes.

The classification in the youth boys is more pronounced. Here Christian Vassallo (St Paul’s Missionary College) is proving to be an unbeatable protagonist, finishing first in every race he has contested thus far. His time on grass was that of 12 minutes dead.

The last event, over 5 km, saw Monalisa Camilleri, for AS Libertas, adding on another slender point over her sporting rival Roberta Schembri (Pembroke Athleta). The winner, however, was Tiziana Zerafa (Pembroke), who clocked 22 minutes.51 seconds, with the first male being her club mate Gordon Lungaro on 19 minutes eight seconds, a clear leader in his category.

Finally, over the same distance, in the Junior Section for young women, Lorna Mifsud (Pembroke Athleta) extended her all-conquering performances finishing in 22 minutes 29 seconds.

Meanwhile, Savio AC runner Matthew Farrugia, in a time of 18 minutes 51 seconds, provided the strongest performance of the day.

Taking the lead soon after the initial jostling, his strong running grounded out the stiff resistance provided by an Allcomers Aloysians trio lead by Andrew Vella, seemingly more suited to running on grass than his team-mate Stephen Moghrabi, in the process provisionally tying the latter to first place in the Junior Men classification.

Indeed the next two events at the Marsa Sports Complex should prove to be as exciting as much as they are determining.