I cannot understand how the Malta Sports Awards came up with such a strange decision last Saturday.

In an island where international successes are very difficult to be reached by any local sportsman/woman, I could not understand how William Chetcuti was deprived of the highest award of the evening – the Malta Sports Award - after being crowned with the title of Sportsman of the Year for a record number of times.

Rightly so, the sports journalists who voted for the Sportsman of the Year picked him as the greatest achiever last year. As a world champion in his sport in Beijing and a prospective Olympic athlete on his own merit, he should have also been awarded the Malta Sport Award without any hesitation.

This argument holds ground further considering that the winner of the Malta Sport Award did not even win the Sportswoman of the Year award, but placed second. I cannot understand how an athlete who places second then outruns other athletes who won their respective category.

As a former president of the Ghaqda Gurnalisti Sport for a  good 17 years I have always insisted that these awards should be the prerogative of only the sports journalists and not have a system whereby the public and associations representatives have their say.

In the case of associations, we always noted that their votes were not assigned to those who really merited the award but because of familiar and sympathetic connections.

The organizing committee would do well to establish new methods to reward future participants because a good activity was marred by a very strange decision.

Henry Calleja

St Julian’s