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Luxembourg Table Tennis Coach Accuses Malta Of ‘Perverting The Spirit Of The Games’ In GSSE

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Luxembourg table tennis coach, Camille Gonderinger, has accused Malta of perverting the spirit of the GSSE Games by recruiting foreign professional players to win gold medals.

Writing in a Facebook post a few days back, the European Table Tennis Union member criticised Malta for its approach to the games. 

“‘Game over’, at least for the table tennis players, at the Games of the Small States of Europe in Malta. A generally outrageous table tennis event has been finished with the finals in the singles competitions, with for LUX a further silver medal by Eric Glod and two further bronze medals by Ariel Barbosa and Luka Mladenovic,” Gonderinger started in his post.

“Congrats to these players, and to all other players, who fairly, although quite angrily, accepted the perversion of the spirit of these Games by the organising country Malta.” 

“In table tennis, Malta thus reverted to (elderly) players only who were neither born nor (sportively) educated in Malta, but who all were former top-players in top TT countries: Russia and Germany (as to the Men categories) and Czech Republic and Romania (as to the Women categories).”

“By this tricky but not very much appreciated and rather unfair practice, MALTA won four out of the six available table tennis gold medals.”

Malta’s strategy to win has reaped stellar rewards with our small country bagging most of the gold medals and ending up the overall winner of the games for the first time ever.

However, some Maltese athletes had also criticised this strategy in the table tennis department and accused this behaviour of demoralising Maltese athletes to gain short-term success by leaving them out from participating in a prestigious competition.

“I was recently left out of the small nation games squad with two other Maltese players and two foreigners (with no connection to Malta) getting the nod to be part of team Malta,” Andrew Gambina had written on social media.

He went on to say that it is just a show being put on, with foreigners at the centre stage, so that MOC and Sports Malta can claim how successful they are when the reality is that very little investment is being made in athletes and facilities locally.

Do you agree with recruiting foreign athletes instead of investing in improving local talent?

READ NEXT: Malta Takes Political U-Turn On NATO's PFP Membership: A Shift In Neutrality Stance

Mario enjoys reading, cooking, the art of film and travelling. A man of this world, he believes that the earth needs more equitable distribution of assets and resources - and way more seafood platters. Contact him via email at [email protected]

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