‘Betrayed And Discarded’: Malta Table Tennis Champion Snubbed As Five Foreign-Born Players Make Small States Team
Malta’s national seniors table tennis champion Gabriel Grixti said he feels “tired, betrayed and discarded” after he was excluded from the national squad for this year’s Games of the Small States of Europe in favour of foreign-born players.
Grixti said he dedicates over 18 hours a week to the sport despite the stress of being a fifth-year medical student, all for the sake of proudly representing Malta on the international stage.
He has a particularly strong resumé, having won three national senior singles titles in recent years (2021/22, 2022/23 and 2024/25), the national doubles title this season, the Maltese Premier League seven seasons in a row, and having competed overseas for years.
However, Grixti warned he has been left out of Malta’s six-person squad for this summer’s GSSE in Andorra. The selected table tennis players are Maria-Carmelia Iacob, Viktoria Lucenkova, Dmitrij Prokopcov, Renata Strbikova, Felix Wetzel, and Daniel Bajada, only one (Bajada) of whom is a Maltese-born athlete.
He said the issue started when the government and the Maltese Olympic Committee granted four Maltese passports to non-Maltese athletes just days before the 2023 GSSE, which Malta had hosted.
“They said this was to give Malta the best chance of winning. I disagreed, but I stayed with the team, even though I was not given the chance to play a single point,” he said.
“I believed in the promises made for a better tomorrow: that these high-level players would contribute and help develop the sport in Malta – the first of MANY empty promises.”
He said that these foreign-born players only briefly trained with their Maltese counterparts in 2022, reappeared right before the Games in 2023 and “vanished right after not to be seen for two whole years”.
“Now we find ourselves in 2025 with these players once again reappearing out of nowhere not to represent Malta out of passion or pride, but for pay,” he said.
“Taxpayer money is being spent on athletes who have never contributed to our sporting community, while Maltese-born athletes who train, sacrifice, and work relentlessly are pushed aside. What message does that send?”
“We were promised better. We expect better.”
He asked the MOC why he has been left out of the squad despite being the current national champion and whether the same criteria were used for all players, suggesting he has been discriminated against.
“This is not just about me. This is about fairness. This is about accountability,” he said.
“Everything mentioned is a point of fact. Anyone who knows a bit about table tennis in Malta, knows exactly what I am speaking about! A relentless vicious circle.”
“The Maltese contingent should feature the country’s best player. While the MOC stated that a selection criteria, published in December 2024, was used to select athletes. In practice it was applied inconsistently, to their advantage when needed and to discriminate against others.”
“I have always been proud to wear Malta’s colours. But today, I feel abandoned by the very institutions that should be protecting athletes and the sport.”
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