Janet Richard and Jeremy Zammit were honoured as athletes of the year following a string of top-level performances throughout the past months. They received the association’s top accolade during an award ceremony held on Sunday.

For this season, Athletics Malta introduced a new system, awarding athletes on the basis of their preferred event, resulting in more athletes being honoured in their respective categories.

Long-jumper Zammit, of Pembroke Athleta, started off the year with an outstanding achievement in this field event, breaking the 17-year-old national record by jumping 7.73m.

This fantastic result followed up his achievements during the previous year, where he had become the first Maltese athlete in his age category to reach the final of both the world and European Under 20 Championships.

Based on these impressive results and his world and European ranking, Zammit has earned a four-year athletic scholarship at the D1 University at Auburn, in the USA, where he will also continue with his studies.

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