Malta’s youth Olympic blunder sees ineligible athlete fielded

THE Maltese Olympic Committee was left with egg on their face after the sole competitor in this summer’s European Youth Olympic Festival (EYOF) was found not to meet the competition’s age requirements just one week before the games were due to begin.

MOC media director Charles Camenzuli confirmed with MaltaToday that the committee only got to know of 17-year-old athlete Janet Richard’s ineligibility on 17 July, during the final accreditation process.

The final accreditation of athletes at the EYOF games takes place in the host country right before the start of the games and, an informed source told MaltaToday, an MOC delegation had actually travelled to Tbilisi in Georgia this summer only to discover that their chosen athlete was over the age limit by some six months.

However, Camenzuli denied that any MOC official or any other delegate had travelled to Tbilisi to formally accredit Richard for the EYOF. The media director explained that Richard qualifies as a ‘youth’ according to regulations set by the International Association of Athletics Federations; indeed, she had represented Malta at the IAAF World Youth Championships in Colombia ten days before the start of the EYOF.

“The MOC started the online registration process [for Janet Richard] in May,” he said. “During the process, we presented a copy of her passport and other data. At no point were we informed of the age restrictions.”

But there had been a letter about that: to level the playing-field for the game’s younger competitors, the EYOF age regulations differ according to each sport.

Had the MOC properly read a letter sent by the games’ organisers to all European national Olympic committees in October 2014, they would have realised that in athletics, only athletes born in 1999 and 2000 were eligible for the games – therefore instantly ruling out Janet Richard, who was born in 1998.

The letter also explicitly states that festival qualification “is entirely in the responsibility of the national Olympic committees, strictly adhering to the respective age and maximum participation quota”.

Richard told this newspaper that the MOC had first informed her back in November that she would be participating in the games. Since Richard was Malta’s only representative and the deadline for the registration of competitors had passed, the MOC’s oversight could well have cost the country a place at the European Youth Olympics.

However, Camenzuli recounted how Patrick Hickey, president of the European Olympic Committees, had personally stepped in and requested that Malta be allowed to send a replacement in Richard’s stead.

The MOC therefore turned their focus on 14-year-old gymnast Sana Grillo – year of birth for gymnasts, 2000 and 2001 – whom they had informed of her participation a mere week before her scheduled performance. She performed poorly, finishing 76th out of 80 European gymnasts in what the MOC described in a press release as a “respectful performance”.

Questions could be raised as to whether Grillo was physically and psychologically prepared for the games, given that she had minimal time to prepare herself for them. However, both Camenzuli and GymStars club assistant director Francesca Borg insisted that she was in good condition to perform.

“Grillo is one of the MOC elite athletes and she is constantly training and preparing for competitions under the direction of her coach, club and national federation,” Camenzuli said.

“Her progress, like all other elite athletes, is constantly updated to the MOC.… Although anything can happen on the day, we had no doubt that she was in a good condition to perform. In fact, her individual result was even better than that obtained some weeks before in the Games of European Small States in Iceland, where she won a silver medal in the team event.”