Future participation in international athletics

Abstract

Before World War II, athletics was a firmly established sport in Malta, the M.A.A.A. held their championships annually and the standard reached was quite high, enhanced as it was, no doubt, by the very large number of excellent service athletes stationed here. Indeed, the standard was so high as to warrant the sending to the Olympic Games held in Berlin in 1936 of a team of athletes comprising Austin Cassar Torreggiani, Paul Pace and Effie Bencini. Alas! gone are those "Olympian" days. Since that time we had the unfortunate intervention of the war which put local athletics so far back that we have barely recovered from that set back. However, the island has the good fortune to-day of having an energetic M.A.A.A. which is striving by every means in its power to put local athletics on the world map.