Maltese swimmers wrapped up their commitments in the 2017 GSSE with a bronze medal in the 4x100 metres freestyle to round off their expedition in San Marino with a total of seven medals in all – two silver and five bronze.

It was the 4x100 freestyle relay team, formed by Andrew Chetcuti, Matthew Galea, Matthew Zammit and Michael Umnov, who won the final medal of the Games when they touched home third in a new national record of 3:28.88.

Their effort yesterday was over two seconds faster than the previous best of 3:30.93 set at the National Pool last April.

In the girls race, Mya Azzopardi, Francesca Falzon Young, Alexandra McGonigle and Leah Tanti finished seventh in 4:03.23.

Earlier, Thomas Wareing placed fourth in the 400 metres individual medley when he completed the distance in a new national mark of four minutes 45.82 seconds.

Wareing’s effort was three seconds faster than the previous best set by Edward Caruana Dingli in 2015 – 4.48.85.

“I’m really pleased with the effort of my swimmers this week,” coach Artem Goncharenko said at the end of competition.

“All the members of the team produced some excellent swims this week and we achieved some excellent results. I’m very happy that Andrew Chetcuti has decided to return to swimming this year as his presence surely gave us more strength in the men’s competition and he played a key role in our medal success in the relay events.

“As regards the young swimmers they have applied themselves well this week and they are showing a lot of promise and I want to thank the MOC for letting us bring them here as this experience will surely serve them in good stead.”

Goncharenko said that Maltese swimming have a bright future and he had no doubt that Malta will put up a much stronger showing in Montenegro in two years’ time.

“We have a very young team who are very serious in their training application and this is showing in the continuous improvement of their times.’’