Last Sunday; 2nd October, The Malta Weightlifting Association (MWA) organized their third ranking competition of the year at the Cottonera Sports Complex. This competition was of particular importance as it served in part as preparation for the upcoming international competitions. Besides this, it was also an opportunity for many other lifters, who have been training hard throughout the summer to show what their dedication and hard work has come to. At the end of the competition, almost all athletes had registered a competition or personal best and many National records were broken along the way. For weightlifting in Malta, this was another very positive result.
In The first competition of the day, two cadets put on a great display. Rylee Borg finished in first with 135points followed by Kyle Camilleri 128point and Jamie Bartolo 78points.
The youth boys were to follow and these too did not disappoint. There was a fierce battle between Kieran Mifsud and Owen Bugeja who lifted totals of 226kg and 220kg respectively, followed by Andy Grech in third place lifting 163kg.
The Third competition saw excellent lifts from youth and junior girls. Shazel Gusman finished in first place in the youths with a total of 105kg which gave her 132 points on the day. Besides this, she also set and new clean & jerk national record. She was followed by 13 year old Shelby Vassallo lifting 91kg. Rebecca Fitz placed first in the juniors category with a total of 104kg who also set a new national record. She was followed by Rebecca Scerri lifting 75kg.
The Fourth competition of the day saw Yazmin Zammit Stevens and Elisia Scicluna in a tight finish lifting the total of 145 kg and 142kg respectively. Zammit finished in first with 188points followed by Kristen Borg with 166points and Scicluna with 164points.
Last competition of the day was for Men Seniors. Taking part in his first competition after the Olympic Games last August was Kyle Micallef who was at his best, producing a 272kg total which is a new personal best. Matthew Camilleri finished in second with a personal best of 235kg. Vlad Baldacchino had a great performance in the snatch part of the competition but had some problems with his first two attempts in the clean & jerk. This left him with a pressure lift on his third attempt and after a few corrections, he managed to secure the lift and a total 233kg. In this competition the results were very close to each other, Eric Saliba had excellent performance lifting 222kg, Charles Degiorgio 198kg, and Yannick Pace 193kg. All the results from this competition were very positive and a great boost for all the lifters who took part.
At the end of this week athletes Kyle Micallef, Matthew Camilleri and Yazmin Zammit Stevens will represent Malta in an international competition in Serbia where they will look to improve on last weeks performance and will be accompanied by President of the Malta Weightlifting Association Jesmond Caruana.