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| Diane Borg of Malta reduced her 200m national record to 24.15 in Marsa on Saturday. |
Diane Borg went a step further with her ambitions of competing at a second European Athletics Championships this summer when Malta's premier female athlete reduced her 200m national record to 24.15 on home soil in Marsa on Saturday.
It was a huge boost to her confidence with Borg's immediate goals being to return to the continental stage again, after missing out on the last Championships in Barcelona two years ago, and also of going below 24 seconds for the longer sprint, which is certainly possible considering her run at the weekend was into the teeth of a breeze.
Amazingly, despite being only 21, Borg has been one of the top stars in local athletics in Malta for seven years.
She competed at the 2006 European Athletics Championships in Göterborg at the tender age of 15, just a few weeks before her 16th birthday, to become one of the youngest ever competitors ever to compete at the Championships; although the accolade of being the youngest ever 100m entrant still belongs to Austria's Elfriede Giest, who was just 15 years and 62 days when she went to her marks at the 1954 edition in the Swiss city of Berne.
By her own admission, Borg almost gave up the sport in 2010 because of persistant injuries but a new coach and club has rekindled her motivation.
Last year, she set a Maltese 100m record of 11.89 at the Games for the Small States of Europe in Liechtenstein.
At the same meeting, Borg clocked her previous 200m record of 24.27 and helped Malta's 4x100m team to victory in a record 46.30.
The three performances contributed significantly to her being named Malta's 2011 Sportswoman of the Year at the SportMalta awards.
Borg is under no illusions that she will return from Helsinki with a medal but she is hoping that rubbing shoulders with Europe's sprinting elite will not go unrewarded and that she will go into new territory again, perhaps producing the best result ever by a Maltese woman at the Championships.
Malta, one of European Athletics' smaller Member Federations, has competed at the European Athletics Championships since 1958 but never won a medal. The best female performance to date has been Tanya Blake making the 2002 800m semi-finals.
The 2012 European Athletics Championships will be held in the Finnish capital from 27 June – 1 July.