For the umpteenth time, William Chetcuti was the winner of the Sportsman of the Year Award – and it could not have been otherwise, seeing that the double-trap shooter had been crowned world champion in Beijing in 2011.

What was surprising, however, is that the newly-introduced MaltaSport Award, given by the Malta Sports Council, was given to someone else. One would have expected Chetcuti to be given this award too – simply because he deserved it.

Instead, it went to Danica Bonello Spiteri, a triathlonist, who did not even win her category – the Sportswoman of the Year – but finished second behind Diane Borg.

Chetcuti has made Malta proud on many an occasion, and without wanting to add pressure on the shooter, there are great expectations for his performance at the London Olympic Games in summer. It is really unfortunate that he did not win the MaltaSport Award too.

Supporters of Steve Camilleri, the Neptunes waterpolo player who came second in the sportsman competition, were probably disappointed that once again their star did not take the top spot, but even they will have to agree that Chetcuti’s feat was remarkable.

For many years, it was only sports journalists who voted for the winners in the Sport Awards, which also include the team and official of the year, but over the past few years associations and the general public have started having their own say.

Journalists now have only 40 % of the vote, and it would be interesting to know how many of them cast their preferences, considering that in private many of them do not agree that associations and the general public have together taken the lion’s share of the voting percentage. They think that such a situation is an attack on their professionalism.

As a newspaper, we cannot agree that associations have a say in this competition. They have their own interests to safeguard and do not look at the overall picture. Often, they vote for athletes who represent their organisation, even when objectively speaking their achievement would be on a lower scale when compared to that of others.

The same goes for the public, whose vote is often based on emotions, rather than the athletes’ achievements. As such, athletes of teams which have a popular backing stand to gain more votes than others who may have done something more important in their field, but whose sport is not so popular.

It is a pity that the Sports Journalists Association has allowed its own competition to be taken over by the Malta Sports Council.