Winning an Olympic medal requires more than passion

Malta’s triumph in the Games of the Small States of Europe last year provided a morale booster. 

For the first time in the games’ history, Malta topped the table with a record-breaking 97 medals, including 38 gold medals across all sporting disciplines. It is true that Malta was competing against countries its own size or even smaller but it was the first time the team excelled beyond everyone’s wildest dreams. 

But fast forward 12 months and the GSSE 2023 success appears to have been a blip in an otherwise barren landscape rather than a sign of progression. 

At the Paris Olympics, Maltese athletes were nowhere close to having a medal within their sights. The Olympic medal continues to elude Malta. The closest this country ever came was in 2004 and 2008 when shooter William Chetcuti lost a tie breaker that would have placed him among the final six had he won. 

For nations with a limited talent pool, qualifying for the world’s biggest sporting gala is already tough, and reaching the podium even more of a long shot. 

Malta’s small size is its main weakness but there have been exceptions and in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, San Marino, with a population of just over 30,000, achieved the distinction of becoming the smallest country to win an Olympic medal. 

But while Malta’s Olympic medals bureau has historically remained empty, other minnows have won medals including the Bahamas (pop. 400,000; medals 16), Barbados (pop. 282,000; medals 1), Cyprus (pop. 1.2 million; 1 medal) and Iceland (pop. 376,000; 4 medals). 

In Paris so far, Fiji with a population of less than one million, has won a silver medal in rugby sevens. 

Can Malta ever aspire to win an Olympic medal or is it just a pipe dream to be resurrected once every four years simply to have something to talk about? 

“The way things stand, it is almost impossible for a Maltese athlete to train full-time professionally and within a professional setting,” weightlifting coach Jesmond Caruana had told MaltaToday three years ago in the aftermath of the Tokyo Olympics. He had accompanied Maltese weightlifter Yasmin Zammit Stevens, who was the first ever Maltese weightlifting participant. 

Caruana did not mince his words: “The best young Maltese talents in weightlifting do quite well, as there is a level playing field at that age with all children being in school. But the older they grow, the more difficult it becomes for them to keep up with the pace, as almost no Maltese athletes become professionals.” 

And this is the crux of the matter. Elite athletes have to become professionals to even start dreaming of being at par with the best and that requires not only a mentality shift but significant investment in education, training, coaching and support structures that provide the right mental, physical and nutritional care an athlete requires. 

A radical re-think is required if Malta aspires to produce elite athletes that can have a sure go at international success. 

Investments like Malta’s flexi-training scheme, where athletes train professionally in their sport for a number of hours per week, and the introduction of a sports school at secondary level, do not appear to have left an appreciable mark on sporting success. 

A professional assessment of these two initiatives is required to determine how they can be improved to truly support elite athletes. 

Another analysis is required at pre-secondary school level to determine whether enough importance is dedicated to sports and physical activity. 

Elite athletes need to be nurtured in the correct manner, provided with scholarships for academies where they can advance their skills while benefitting from a wholesome education. And substantial financial investment is required to ensure that these athletes can participate regularly in international competitions and training camps. 

Associations and clubs should also be helped to professionalise their sector with good coaches and facilities. 

But there is also the psychological aspect that needs to be nurtured. Unfortunately, too many promising Maltese athletes in various sporting fields just fade away because they do not find the support network that enables them to adopt sports as a lifestyle; as a job. 

Writing in this newspaper a couple of weeks ago, Kayleigh Busuttil Fitzpatrick, spoke of her passion for tennis and how a government sports scholarship has helped her make the leap to a more professional set up. 

She is still a teenager and recounted how 10 months ago she packed up her bags and moved to Sicily where she is now living as a full-time athlete in Palermo. She trains for five hours a day and catches up with her studies in between training sessions, late at night or on weekends. She plays tournaments, eats meals prepared by nutritionists and has mental coaching and physiotherapy sessions every week. 

This is one girl – she is still a girl – who has decided that passion alone is not enough to succeed internationally. Indeed, she has transformed that passion into a daily routine of constant hard work. But more importantly this is being done in an enabling environment. 

It is this attitude that is required from our elite athletes and those aspiring to go places in sports. If Malta aspires to ever have athletes who can rank among the best, a holistic approach is necessary to have more meaningful investment in sports. 

Anything less means we can just have an interesting debate on medals never seen every four years, while watching smaller countries step up on the Olympic podium to collect theirs.