Malta’s most successful athlete at the 2009 Games for European Small States in Cyprus, Nikolai Portelli, will not be taking part at this year’s Liechtenstein Games which start in less than a fortnight.

It is a pity that Portelli, who had won three medals – two silver and a bronze – and had been labelled King of Team Malta, is now unable to represent the country.

He has been ruled out after failing to achieve the required MQS in the last meeting at the weekend where he was also surpassed by some other athletes. Portelli was making his comeback after a long term injury which had seen him out of action from last season.

Last week, Portelli had been described as being in good shape, but the results this weekend showed otherwise, as quite unfortunately, he remained non-competitive.

It is to be remembered that in the Cyprus Games, Portelli had finished second in the 200m in a time of 21.63secs, thus claiming a silver medal. Then he helped the 4 x 100 metres team win the silver medal by placing second in a time of 3:16.90, and later claimed bronze by helping the team clinch third place in the 4 x 400 metres relay.

Excellent performances

Meanwhile, it is known that there were some excellent performances by some athletes during last weekend’s meeting, the last one before the Games in Liechtenstein.

Nicole Gatt, a very promising youngster managed to beat the established Francesca Xuereb in the 400m. The youngster, however, was only taking part as a trialist.

Other highly encouraging performances came from Diane Borg in the 100m and 200m where she was very close to establishing new national records for the distances.

There was also a great comeback from Rashid Chouhal who went below the 11 second mark in the 100m, clocking 10.97.

Other good performances from among the men came from Andy Grech, Karl Farrugia and Owen Camilleri. They all seem to have peaked at the right time, just a few days ahead of the GSSE competition in just over two weeks.