Cassar Torreggiani leaps to new junior record

Strong winds and cold weather marked the second pre-season meeting at Marsa last weekend. Despite the unfavourable conditions, some athletes dug deep and were rewarded with some commendable results.

One athlete who left his mark was Andrew Cassar Torreggiani. The 16-year-old set a new long jump record in the junior and intermediate categories of 6.80m.

This is the second time Cassar Torreggiani has established a new mark in this event, the scholarship he is currently seeing through in the UK is paying its dividends.

Owen Camilleri picked up where he left off in pre-season with wins in both the 60m and 150m sprints. Although slow out of the blocks this time, Camilleri regained ground, sprinting home in 7.16s.

Benefiting from the expert advice of his coach, Camilleri made amends when starting the 150m and dashed home to a comfortable win in 16.57s.

With Charlene Attard absent, Lara Scerri stole the attention with wins in the 60m and 150m sprints. This was Scerri's first competition this year and there is clearly more to come from her this season, especially when she goes head-to-head with her training partner Attard.

Over the longer distances, Giselle Camilleri and Haithem Kisheim maintained their winning trend, finishing the 2,000m race in 6:55.63 and 5:57.47 respectively. Celine Pace, a sprinter turned middle distance runner last year, is also showing promise after winning the 600m in 1:41.40.

Each meeting has its close-fought battles, and the one of last weekend wasn't any different.

In a tight 600m race, Mark Herrera and Mario Debono were at it throughout. With 250m to go, Debono decided to break for the lead only to find that Herrera had in him a stronger finish, stopping the clock on 1:23.66 - a mere 14 hundreds of a second ahead of Debono.

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