Almost a century has passed since Malta’s first foray into the Olympic Games, when its nine-man waterpolo team reached the quarterfinals of the Amsterdam 1928 games.

Ninety-six years later, this remains arguably the country’s most successful showing.

Since then, over 100 athletes have represented Malta across a further 20 editions of the games, each of them aspiring to compete with the world’s best in their respective disciplines and, perhaps, bag a medal.

All of them have returned empty-handed.

There have been some respectable performances over the years, from shooter William Chetcuti’s near misses in 2004, 2008 and 2012, to windsurfer Peter Bonello’s ninth-placed finish in 1984.

There have also been encouraging results in other competitions, not least last year’s Small Nations Games, where Malta topped the medal count.

But Malta has largely looked on forlornly as several other world minnows took turns competing for silverware.

This year, Julien Alfred swept to victory in the women’s 100-metre sprint to bag a first medal for Saint Lucia, population 180,000.

Closer to home, San Marino – population 33,000, a touch fewer than St Paul’s Bay – took home three medals at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, while Liechtenstein’s 39,000 residents have collected a total of 10 medals over the years, albeit all of them in alpine skiing.

Malta remains one of only eight European countries – and 74 around the world – to have never seen one of its athletes step triumphantly on an Olympic podium.

Times of Malta spoke to former Olympians and sports educators to try and understand what is holding Maltese athletes back.

How can we know if we’re talented if children don’t practise sport?

Former Olympic runner Mario Bonello says that much of the problem boils down to starting athletes early.

“Are we giving sport enough prominence at school?” he asks, rhetorically.

“We need to widen participation at younger age levels. We don’t know what talent we have because many children don’t participate in sports in the first place,” he says.

Bonello argues that given Malta’s small pool of children from which to choose, the country needs to up the ratio of children practising sports higher than that of other countries if it wants to start on an equal footing.

Bonello says that this requires a root-and-branch rethink of attitudes towards sports in schools.

Instead of sporadic physical education lessons spread throughout the week, he says, more schools should be looking to emulate the model adopted by the National Sports School to offer students the opportunity to dedicate an hour-and-a-half each day to sport.

‘Get athletes out of their comfort zone’

Popular sports broadcaster and educator George Micallef agrees that attitudes towards sport often hold Malta back.

Micallef, a founder of the National Sports School, is today in charge of sports development and recruitment at the Mediterranean College of Sports, an independent school for children over the age of 11.

“Malta lacks a proper sports culture that is ingrained from an early age,” Micallef says, pointing to what he perceives as shortcomings in athletes’ “performance lifestyle”, or their mindset and day-to-day habits.

“Being an athlete is more than training and practising a sport, it’s also about sleeping habits, nutrition, perseverance and how you live your life.”

The problem, Micallef believes, is ultimately cultural and stretches beyond just the realm of sports.

“We tend to pamper youths, instead of encouraging them to stretch beyond their comfort zone and develop discipline, resilience and autonomy,” he says, arguing that these qualities are crucial for an athlete to deal with sporting setbacks.

Just look at how many athletes move abroad to advance their sporting careers but don’t stick it out, returning home after just a few weeks or months, he says.

Invest in sports science

That’s not to say that it all boils down to culture.

Micallef believes that Malta still lags behind other countries when it comes to sports science, particularly in areas like sports psychology and data analysis.

Ultimately, Micallef says, “Maltese athletes lack a holistic development that goes beyond purely technical training”.

These shortcomings emerge in top-level competitions, where the finest of margins can sway a result, he argues.

Bonello echoes these thoughts when asked whether Maltese athletes tend to underperform during the Olympics, compared to their usual standard.

“Not everybody was born with the mentality required to win an Olympic medal,” he says, pointing out that pressures and expectations can sometimes play tricks on even the most technically gifted international athletes.

‘We force youths to choose between sports and education’

Both Bonello and Micallef agree that support structures for Maltese athletes are sorely lacking, with athletes frequently finding themselves between a rock and a hard place when faced with crucial career decisions.

Bonello recalls how, on several instances, athletes had to withdraw from prestigious international competitions because their dates clashed with exams or coursework.

In one instance, he says, “an examiner accompanied the athlete abroad so the athlete could sit for an O-level exam during a competition”.

Micallef believes that “we make children choose either education or sports, instead of helping them develop a dual career”. When push comes to shove, he says, many abandon their sporting dreams to focus on their academic careers.

“Can you blame them? An athlete’s career is short and can be unsteady. We are losing so many young athletes in this way, especially girls.”

Were this year’s Olympic results disappointing?

Former runner Tanya Blake, who represented Malta in the Athens 2004 Olympics, certainly doesn’t think so.

“I don’t agree that the Maltese athletes gave disappointing performances,” she says. “They all earned their right to be there and would have performed to the best of their ability on the day.”

More broadly, she believes that Malta’s sporting performances are on the up. “I’ve really enjoyed seeing the progress that Maltese sport has made, especially in athletics,” she says.

“Maltese athletes have shown that they can excel in the GSSE (small nations games), Mediterranean games and Commonwealth games.”

But why not the Olympics? And why are we being outflanked by fellow European minnows?

Part of the reason is experience, Bonello says.

Athletes from the likes of San Marino (“more or less just another Italian town, at least geographically”) have far more opportunities to travel and train with top Italian athletes in their field and gain crucial competition experience, compared to their Maltese counterparts.

Still, Bonello echoes Blake’s optimism over the upward trajectory of Malta’s sports, especially in light of what he describes as “unprecedented investment in athletics” over the past three years.

Malta’s training facilities are “generally very good,” he says, and there have been moves to consolidate the progress through more professionalisation in the sector.

The setting up of Malta’s first-ever national athletics team in 2020 is key to this, he believes. “This means that we now follow athletes throughout the year, not just at competition time,” he says.

“We’ve started seeing some results in our strong performances at last year’s small nations games and in the recent European Team Championships.”

But, he warns, this investment needs to be sustained over time, if we want to see the kind of improvements we expect.

“And by sustaining the investment I don’t mean just throwing money at the problem, it’s about supporting new and emerging athletes to fulfil their potential.”