Maltese weightlifting has been having an incredible year, and the youth team’s success the past weekend adds another two Gold international medals to their list of achievements. The Youth National team made up of 14 year old Tenishia Thornton, 11 year old Kim Camilleri Lagana and 16 year old Tristan Zammit competed at the Challenge 210 Tournament in Tramelan, Switzerland.
These championships saw some of the most successful athletes, youth and senior, compete as it was also an Olympic Qualification event. Malta’s youngest national team athlete at 11 years old, Kim, was the first one to take on the platform. Despite this being her 1st international appearance, she managed to finish on top in the U13 age group and with her perfect 6/6 performance. With a body weight of 28kg, she ended the meet with 27kg in the Snatch and 35kg in the clean and jerk breaking all her previous U13 records in the 32kg category. Athletes from Switzerland and Germany placed in 2nd and 3rd.
Tenishia Thornton, who needs no introduction at this point, started off with a less than expected 52kg snatch but turned the competition around with a whopping 67kg in the clean and jerk potion of the competition. With a body weight of 46kg she set 3 national records in the 49kg category, and snatching herself another international Gold medal to add to her collection. Athletes from Hungary and Switzerland placed in 2nd and 3rd. Thornton has managed to become Malta’s most decorated youth athlete in it’s history in the sport and is showing no signs of slowing down. She is now preparing for the European Youth Championships in Israel next December.
This was also the first international competition for 16 year old Tristan Zammit who finished this competition with 102kg snatch, 123kg clean and jerk and 3 new national records in the U17 102+kg category. Despite being introduced to the sport a few years ago, Zammit only started training regularly recently and has been showing steady improvement with every competition.
The team was accompanied by National team coach Jesmond Caruana, who was also selected to be a technical official in the Olympic Qualification part of the event. Athlete and coach are incredibly happy with their success at this meet and thank the Malta Olympic Committee and Sport Malta for their ongoing support. They will continue to work to finish off the year with even bigger lifts.