Malta’s only winner at the Baku European Games: the travel agent

It’s been a proper comedy of errors for Malta at the Baku Games of 2015. Even the bard, with all his literary genius, would be amiss for words at this yet another sport debacle.

The Baku Games saw the Maltese Olympic Committee field no fewer than 58 athletes to represent our country’s sporting fortunes and the results are an embarrassment in all the sports disciplines in which we took part.

This is a critical point, as from 1995 the technical strategy changed from simply participating in international multi-sport events to put in place strategic plans like the FDL scientific programme to monitor athletes, rigid MQS (minimum qualification scores), expert coaching, talent identification and on-the-ground field monitoring procedures.

We switched the ethos to one of competing rather than participating – it was a long process to get out of this frame of mind. And the results are there for all to see. Whenever we fielded athletes in whatever competition – GSSE (Small Nations) and much higher standard of games like the Mediterranean and Commonwealth, World and European championships – we always came back with a reasonable medal haul, and other very good performances, with close misses to reach podium places in these high-level games.

The cream on the cake was reaching top eight in shooting in the 2008 Olympics – quite a feat for a country like Malta!

But Baku revealed for the fourth time since 2013, the sorry state of our supposedly elite athletes, with the MOC returning home with dismal performances, namely:

2013, GSSE Luxembourg, the worst Malta achieved since 1995; 2014, Commonwealth Games, worst in two decades; 2015, GSSE Iceland, a regression in the gold and silver medals haul, and a regression in the final table when we last competed in Iceland 18 years ago, and the three worst results at the GSSE since 1995.

And now Baku, an even bigger defeat for Maltese sport. Out of 6,000 athletes, only 59 had won an Olympic gold, and many top European athletes did not attend the games, with many events being contested by youngsters and lesser-known competitors, for many their first experience of an international multi-event competition (Tom Hayward, Times of Malta, 18 June).

Malta fielded no fewer than 58 athletes. Compared with other GSSE nations and their medal haul in Iceland 2015, one finds:

Iceland, with 18 athletes in Baku, winning 38 gold in GSSE 2015; Luxembourg’s 58 athletes winning 34 gold; Cyprus, 22, winning 20; Montenegro, 55, winning nine; Monaco, four winning seven gold; Liechtenstein, six winning seven gold; Andorra, 31, winning four; and San Marino, nine athletes winning no gold medals in GSSE 2015.

And Malta? Fielding 58 athletes in Baku having won four gold medals in the Iceland games… and the athlete that won two of the four gold medals could not make it to Baku for personal reasons.

And then, out of 50 participating countries in Baku, 42 won a medal, including three GSSE nations – Montenegro, Cyprus and San Marino – while eight countries, Malta included, failed to make it to the podium, six of which are GSSE countries. Malta had the largest contingent of these losing nations.

Malta lost all five water-polo games, conceding 76 goals to take the wooden spoon. In triathlon, both athletes did not finish the race or were lapped, the woman placing last and the man placing 54th out of 57.

In cycling, both athletes failed to finish the race, the woman placing 61st out of 66, and the man finishing 110th out of 116 athletes.

Our woman in air pistol shooting ended 32nd out of 36, while our trump card in all games, our male shooter in double trap, garnered a 13th placing out of 16 shooters. I can’t remember a worst placement for this showcase sport of Malta in a multi-sport event!

Our two badminton athletes lost all 18 games, ending up with a negative point difference of 78 in the men’s singles, 76 in the women’s, and 100 in the mixed doubles, placing them bottom of the overall classification.

In judo, seasoned Marcon Bezzina was eliminated by Sweden’s Hermansson in 2.3 minutes. The Swede was subsequently eliminated, placing seventh overall while Malta took bottom place. Isaac Bezzina lost his only bout in just over one minute, while his British opponent failed to proceed in the competition. So Isaac had no chance for a repêchage, ending at the tail-end of the 31 competitors.

The real anomaly is athletics, where we compete in Europe’s lowest, the third division. With 13 countries in the pool, all we could muster with the largest portion of our contingent was ninth placing, and with two athletes and the women’s 4x100 relay placing in the top four, and only four national records broken.

Out of the 20 events we took part in, we were 215 team points adrift from the gold and silver placing, and nearly 200 team points away form the bronze medal. I cannot agree with the president of the Malta Amateur Athletics Association (Times of Malta, 26 June), that one can be satisfied by placing at the lower end of the final classification in the third division and with only two athletes in individual events out of the many we fielded, in the top three out of 20 events.

One cannot but question the MOC’s wisdom in excluding the 4x100 women’s team from the Iceland GSSE when they broke the national record in Baku and surpassed the MQS for Iceland.

If we don’t set our targets and aspirations at a higher pitch we are doomed to mediocrity. I cannot recall having four athletes not finishing their events, so many wooden-spoonists, a lacklustre performance in third-grade athletics competition, a heavy score-line in a team sport… certainly not since 1995 that is. And the glaring non-performance in shooting, our flagship sport since Larry Vella’s performance in the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the only winner from the Baku games was the travel agent selling the tickets to our contingent.

In 2006, the MOC fielded 30 athletes for Melbourne’s Commonwealth Games, with 10 Maltese-Australians saving on total flight costs; and we obtained results in a much tougher arena, amongst them a silver and bronze medal in shooting and two play-offs for bronze in weightlifting and lawn bowls. The list continues. In the final table, we placed 28th out of 71 federations, which included England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, and Nigeria.

So we went from the top 25% of athletes in Melbourne in six of nine disciplines we competed in, to the bottom 25% in Baku.

It’s as if the clock was turned back. ‘Join the Olympic team and see the world’ found its way in again after a hard-fought battle to move away from this perverse culture. Serious administrators don’t take athletes to gain experience in intercontinental, multi-sport events like Baku.

Salient questions come to mind: Were MQS for all sports and athletes achieved? Did we monitor the Baku competition before fielding a team that was an embarrassment? Was the top-quality scientific mentoring and monitoring programme retained in the run-up to the games? Were the athletes monitored every six-week meso-cycle? Were the national federations monitored on all facets of their preparation? And were they afforded the necessary funds for a proper periodized training and preparation programme?

Baku exposed our lack of a strategic, technical macro-plan for sport, and this after investing €9 million of taxpayers’ money over the last 18 years, and a revolutionary and unprecedented investment programme in sport infrastructure.

The MOC is to carry the responsibility for this sporting debacle: after two years of repeated non-performance, whoever gives the committee their tax-funded income has to take stock of the situation and ensure we do get value for money while respecting the MOC’s autonomy.

As in all walks of life, sport administrators must be held accountable for their decisions and actions.