Athletics Malta will be hosting the Malta International Invitation meeting at the Matthew Micallef St. John Athletic Stadium, tomorrow.
The MAAA has invited teams and individual athletes from Egypt, France, Luxemburg, Sicily, Tunisia and United Kingdom to participate in this meeting. The first event will start at 2pm with the 400m hurdles, an event which has not been held at the Marsa track for some years now.
The North England team, with 20 young athletes is the largest contingent. Particularly interesting will be the team from Tunisia which will include 110m hurdler Ben Ahmed Eymen (13.76), Shot putter Meddeb Mohammed (18.51m) and Merdessi Ahlem who has a Personal Best of 2:07.8 for the 800m.
These Tunisian athletes will be joining some of the Egyptian runners competing in the forthcoming Africa Cup 2008 soon after leaving Malta.
The Sports Club Catania have among their party such athletes as 100m Giuseppe Ardizzone (10.50secs) and 400m runner Anna Guerra (54.90secs). Giuseppe is expected to find a tough competitor in Daniel Abenzoar (Luxembourg), who has been in Malta since the beginning of April for his training camp. Daniel will be running in both the 100m (10.41secs) and the 200m (20.86secs).
The Malta team is composed of those athletes who are seeking a place in the forthcoming Olympic Games in Beijing (though only one male and one female will qualify) but especially in preparation for next year’s Games for European Small States to be held in Cyprus.
Among them will be the top athletes such as Darren Gilford, Nikolai Portelli, Rashid Chouhal, Charlene Attard, Francesca Xuereb and Martina Xuereb not to mention the others.
Maltese athletes taking part will number around 40 while the number of participating foreigners should be around 47. These should make it an entertaining afternoon tomorrow.
Athletics Malta President Anthony Chircop confirmed yesterday that doping tests would also be made at random. “We have been doing it in the past few years, but we have never had a problem so far,” he stated.
Star Track event next Thursday
As in previous years Athletics Malta is staging the Star Track event next Thursday 1 May.
Star Track is a promotional event for children aged between 7 and 12 years. Star Track is precisely meant to attract youngsters to the sport.
Athletics Malta hopes to be able to find some talented children among the participants which, of course, would need to be developed.
Parents are invited to take their children to the Marsa track at 9am where the children will be grouped according to age and shown the very basic skills of athletics in the form of enjoyable games. They will be under the supervision of trained coaches who will be noting the children’s abilities. They will be given a commemorative medal as well as some fruit and beverages. While waiting for their children parents will be invited to form a group and join in for some keep fit/aerobic exercises.