In the past few days, the Maltese Olympic Committee was among all Commonwealth countries taking part in the 4th edition of the Commonwealth Youth Games held in the Isle of Man.
Following the selection made by the MOC Youth Directorate led by Envic Galea, Malta’s contingent of five young athletes and respective coaches was led by MOC Secretary General, Joseph Cassar.
In Pune during the third edition of these Games held in 2007, Malta won a silver medal in shooting thanks to Ryan Bugeja. However shooting was not in the programme of disciplines for the Isle of Man edition.
Malta participated with five athletes in gymnastics and swimming who, considering the high standard of the competition, obtained positive and encouraging results, in some cases even managing to qualify for the final stage of the respective competition.
The athletes chosen by the Maltese Olympic Committee form part of the MOC Youth programme and the participation in such Games is part of their programme to gain further international experience in a multi-sport environment.
This participation was also due to the support and assistance given to the Maltese Olympic Committee by the Olympic Solidarity.
The Opening Ceremony was held on 9 September with the Maltese contingent led by Joe Cassar, Secretary General of the MOC and Malta’s flag bearer for these Games was gymnast Kirsty Caruana.
The opening day of competition saw gymnasts Kirsty Caruana and Andreana Zammit making it to the finals after finishing the the 13th and 14th place from 28 gymnasts .
Attention, however, was at the main swimming pool where Andrea Agius in the 100m breaststroke finished 7th in 1 min 9.16 seconds, making it to the finals while in the 50m butterfly Nicola Muscat finished 13th from 21 swimmers in 29.75 seconds.
Mark Sammut in the 50m butterfly ended 13th from 26 swimmers with 26.77 seconds.
On the second day of competition, in swimming, in 50m freestyle Nicola Muscat made it to the final after finishing in the 8th place in the preliminaries in 26.74 sec.
In the 50m backstroke preliminaries, Mark Sammut finished in the 12th place in 27.50 sec. and in the 100m butterfly preliminaries he finished in the 10th place in 57.21 sec. Sammut broke both national records in these events.
At the Manx Gymnastics Centre of Excellence, where the gymnastics finals were held, much to the surprise of Kirsty Caruana and Andreana Zammit, the highlight of the day was the surprise visit of Prince Edward who stayed for a while chatting with the gymnasts prior to the finals.
In the all round finals, Kirsty Caruana finished in 13th place with 43.35 points and Andreana Zammit finished in 15th place with 41.05 points.
On the third day of competition, in the vault, Kirsty Caruana finished 8th in the final with a total of 12.225 points.
In swimming, Nicola Muscat ended 12th from 24 swimmers when in the 50m backstroke she covered the distance in 31.51 sec. In the 100m backstroke, men, Mark Sammut ended in the 11th place with 58.62 sec.
The best result of the day came from Andrea Agius who, in the 50m breastroke, with a time of 31.84 sec, made it to the final, after finishing 8th from 18 swimmers in the preliminaries.
Eventually in the final Andrea Agius bettered his time as he made the 50m distance in 31.75 seconds ending up in 6th place which was perhaps the best result obtained in the 4th Commonwealth Youth Games.