Veteran sports commentator passes away

Local sports commentator, Teddie Borg, passed away this morning at the age of 78.

Borg, a well-known lover of sailing, was instrumental in the promotion of local motor sports, as well as sailing.

At one point Super One’s head of sport, Teddie Borg was interviewed by this newspaper back in January 2001.

“My love for sports can be traced to my early childhood,” Borg had said. “Needless to say, a boy of modest means, growing up in the late thirties and forties had little choices regarding recreation time.”

Borg, even thirteen years ago, spoke about how the emerging technology was serving as an alternative means by which youngsters sought entertainment.

“In those bygone days, one simply did not have the various amounts of toys and games that exist today, not to mention all that technology has produced,” he told former Malta Today journalist Ray Abdilla. “We had to be very creative and maybe the word recreation was a more appropriate description of how we enjoyed our leisure time.”

“Every opportunity to run outside the house and to be with our friends was extremely valued, as boys of course loved football - a game that could always be played no matter how poor one was,” he said. “A rag ball was our football, hardly round, but it gave us many hours of joy.”

Having been raised in Mdina, Borg began a career in football guarding the posts of Rabat Magpies between 1956 and 1958. “One match that will stay prominent in my memory is when we beat Floriana in their best days, for the first time in Rabat’s history.”

Borg lost his parents when still very young and spent much of his childhood with relatives in Marsaskala in an area known as ‘Wied il-Ghaks’. “Off we went as often as possible out to sea and fish. I can honestly say that these fishing trips generated in me a great love for the sea and they also provided me with unlimited information regarding navigating manoeuvres, of course, of a primitive kind.”

“Whenever I sail up to this day, which I might add is one of my most valued pastimes, especially now in my senior citizen age, I find that early knowledge always comes into good use.”

In 1972, Borg was introduced to what would become another passion of his: motorcycling. It was at that time that Borg was approached by a small group of Rabat bike enthusiasts and convinced him to organise a moto-cross race with some form of rules.

“I managed to acquire a piece of land at Mtarfaditch which was to serve as the initiation of a well-marshalled 400 member organisation known as ‘Ghaqda Maltija tal-Muturi,” he recalled. “Though this kind of presidency literally killed me, as regards organisation, I do admit that I loved every minute of it.”

In 1982, Borg won the ‘Best Sporting Official of the Year’ award and twelve years later, in 1994, produced the first programme of Super Sailing on Super One television – a weekly programme exclusively on sailing. The programme, a first of its kind in Malta, was awarded the best TV programme by the Broadcasting Authority for three consecutive years from 1997 to 1999.