Nikol Micallef and Barry Farrugia represent MYTA at an international Triathlon Training Camp in Spain

The Malta Triathlon Federation, in its continuous quest to offer the best of possibilities and opportunities to the athletes of the Malta Youth Triathlon Academy - MYTA, has established an agreement with the European Triathlon Union to have its promising athletes attending international youth training camps to improve their level of play. In the past four years, there were already 10 different young triathletes who participated in these training camps.

This year is no different as the young enfante prodige of Maltese youth triathlon; Nikol Micallef was joined by MYTA coach Barry Farrugia in an international youth triathlon training camp in Alicante, Spain. This was not the first time for Micallef to attend such a camp as he has already been selected for a similar stage in Tiszaújváros, Hungary last summer. Micallef has been excelling not only in multisport races, but also in the single sport competi- tions, especially in cycling. During his sessions with the MYTA, Micallef is trained under the attentive eye of Barry Farrugia who is a Level 2 licenced triathlon coach and who is part of the coaching team at the Academy. Micallef and Farrugia joined a team of around 30 other youth athletes and coaches from all over Europe.

Nikol said: “I was very excited when I learnt that I will be attending this camp and more so that I would be accompanied by my MYTA coach, Barry. My family made sure everything was prepared to perfection for this opportunity. When we arrived in Alicante I was astonished not only with the number of athletes participating but more so with the high-quality of my counterparts. We were training practically three times a day, like professional athletes. We would start the day with a swimming session followed by a run. Then we usually went cycling in late afternoon. The highlight of the camp was cycling inside a velodrome! It was a dream come true for me!”

On his side, coach Farrugia remarked that “it was a great experience having the possibility to coach a splendid group of athletes and sharing the knowledge of triathlon-training with the other coaches. I am truly grateful for the opportunity that the Federation and MYTA gave Nikol and myself and I am looking forward to share all I’ve learnt to the MYTA athletes in our training sessions”.

The MYTA currently has 35 athletes of various ages between seven and 15. Athletes have three sessions a week and training is done primarily at the Kirkop Sports Complex and the National Pool Complex. The MYTA project is supported heavily by SportMalta and is part of the latter’s sports’ programmes.

MYTA will be once again taking on new young athletes from seven years upwards for the summer 2017 programme.