Malta spends €37.3 million on sports infrastructure for 2023 small nations games

Malta would have invested €37.3 million in sports infrastructure for the small nations games that will be held here next year, Sports Minister Clifton Grima said.

The expenditure includes an investment of €17.1 million on the construction of a new indoor pool at the Cottonera Sports Complex in Bormla and extensive renovation works of the existing facility.

The Games of the Small States of Europe will return to Malta in 2023, two decades after the island last hosted them. Malta first hosted the games in 1993 and then in 2003.
Grima said another €17.4 million are being spent on the Marsa sports complex that includes an upgraded athletics track, new squash courts and other ancillary facilities. A further €2.9 million are being invested in a new tennis centre in Pembroke.

The minister was replying to a parliamentary question by Labour MP Naomi Cachia.

The GSSE are a biennial multisport event that was created following an initiative from the Maltese Olympic Committee in 1985, for European countries having less than one million inhabitants. 

The GSSE feature a core of six individual sports and two team sports. Each organising committee may add a maximum of two other Olympic sports or one Olympic Sport and one non-Olympic Sport.

In 2023, Malta will be presenting a sports programme which includes athletics, basketball, judo, rugby 7’s, sailing, shooting, squash, swimming, table tennis and tennis.

The games will take place between 28 May and 3 June 2023.

The first edition was held in 1985 in San Marino and welcomed athletes from Andorra, Cyprus, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, and San Marino. In 2009 Montenegro became the ninth member state.

Since the start of the games, Maltese athletes won 331 medals.