An encouraging number of athletes participated in the recent Malta Open Championships organised annually by the Malta Weightlifting Association.

In the under 10 years cadets competition, the winner was Rylee Borg. It must be stressed that in this category, for obvious reasons, the assessment is on technique and not on weights lifted.

The second competition for cadets under 13 years of age was won by Kirsten Coleiro when he lifted 16Kgs in the snatch and 25Kgs in the Clean and Jerk. These two lifts gained Kirsten 109 points in the final classifications.

The third competition was for female youths and the winner was Nicole Gatt with a total of 79Kgs. This result gained Nicole 127 points she was followed in second place by Destiny Vella Busuttil who lifted 82Kgs and gained 109 points. In this competition seven national records were broken - all by Nicole - in the 44Kg category, three of these records are in the youths section, another three in the Juniors and the final one in the Seniors.

The men’s competition was fiercely contested. Noel Coleiro deservedly won this category with a total of 233Kgs and 272 points.

Second place was won by Clint Grech who had to persist to his final lift not to be taken over by Rodmar Pulis. Grech lifted a total of 197Kg and gained 263 points.

Third place was won by 16 year old Rodmar Pulis with an impressive 259 points and 206Kgs an additional 11Kgs on his best total.

With these results Pulis managed to break nothing less than 10 national records in the 77Kg category. Five of the records are in the youths section and another five in the Juniors section.

Matthew Muscat Inglott gave a good challenge with a total of 222Kgs and 252 points followed by Kristian Mintoff with a total of 190Kgs and 219 points.

The competition was run by the association’s President Jesmond Caruana. Technical officials for this competition where Alfred Ellul Mercer, Simon Brincat, Ramona Borg and Gayle Caruana. The competition was sponsored by Paparukie Catering of Gzira.