Seventeen athletes from Athletics Malta are to take part in the 27th Young Athletes Meeting at the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre in the first week of April.
Athletes from Norway, Poland, Cuba and the Czech Republic, apart from Malta and hosts England, are also expected to take part.
The athletes are Jeremy Borg, Christian Luke Chetcuti, Roberto Faure, Nigel Mifsud, Clayton Sheldon, Robert Zammit, Andrew Cassar Torregiani, Ezekiel Micallef, Stephanie Alden, Jessica Gauci, Julie Ann Grech, Hannah Pace, Jana Pace Cocks, Maria Sciberras, Tamara Vella, Nadine Aquilina and Chloe Gambin.
IAAF Level 1 Technical Officials Course
The IAAF Level 1 Technical Officials Course is the fist of a world-wide three-level programme for qualification and deployment of Technical Officials in order to ensure that Athletic Meetings are conducted properly and in line with the competition rules of the IAAF.
The IAAF Course provides a standard curricula, course materials and specially trained lecturers as well as standardised evaluation procedures for the different levels. Participants on a TOECS course in any country can be assured that the quality of their training is equivalent to that provided to participants on any other course in the system.
In our case the IAAF will be sending over to Malta a Russian qualified lecturer, by the name of Elena Orlova. The course requires 35 hours to cover all the athletic events and is spread over 12 sessions of around three hours each. The course will start on Saturday 4 April and will finish with a written examination on Saturday 14 April.
Malta Athletics needs to have a good team of officials for your weekly competitions but especially to be able to apply to host International Meetings here. As already published last week, Malta Athletics will be hosting an International Meeting at Micallef St. John Athletic Stadium on Saturday 26 April.
Signing of the Track agreement
The Matthew Micallef St John track at Marsa is now in the hands of Malta Athletics after an agreement with the Maltese Council for Sport was signed last month.
Athletics Malta has been given a long –term lease or otherwise, of the Matthew Micallef St. John Athletic Stadium, as had been originally proposed during a seminar that the MAAA had organised in August 1996, for which apart from local prominent speakers the MAAA had invited Mr (now Sir) Frank Dick OBE and Mr. Elio Locatelli (IAAF ).
The association is now looking into the needs of the basic facilities which are still lacking at the Marsa track and will be doing its utmost to make it available to all local athletes in an effort to improve local standards further. Among the primary needs are dressing rooms and showers for the athletes, a well equipped weights room, a clinic and testing laboratory, and other equipment.
In the not too distant future, a sauna, Jacuzzi and other similar facilities like a lecture room, a modest hall and administrative offices, will also be considered.
The Association is now responsible for the marketing, maintenance, and control of the track and its facilities. It is the Association which has to find the funds necessary for all utilities, services and maintenance and therefore one cannot expect to continue to make use of these facilities free of charge. However, Athletics Malta will charge reasonable fees.
The facilities will be offered to all the local Sports Associations/ Federations. In fact we are hoping that we would be able to attract individual athletes as well as teams from other sports associations who would be preparing themselves for international competitions on the short term and foreign athletes on the medium and long term.
The ultimate aim of the Association is to continue to develop the track facilities into a professional or “accredited” training centre for athletes. In the “warm up’ area, which is precisely behind the stands there is an area of some 35m x 140 metres which Athletics Malta believes has a great potential for the development of such a centre.