Team Malta concludes Commonwealth Games campaign in Glasgow

Team Malta concluded its sporting commitments at the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games on Saturday, with the final appearances coming in lawn bowls.

In the morning session, Shaun Parnis and Troy Lorimer completed their campaign in the Men’s Pairs with an impressive victory over Niue’s Tifaga Tupuiliu and Keith Papani.

The Maltese pair made an excellent start, placing bowls around the head from the opening exchanges. Lorimer led superbly, giving Parnis a strong platform, and their consistent performance was rewarded with a 6-4 victory in the opening set.

They continued in the same vein in the second set, with both players producing accurate bowls and dominating from start to finish. Malta scored 11 shots without reply to win the set 11-0 and finished fourth in their group.

Connie Rixon also completed her women’s singles round-robin campaign, facing Canada’s Kelly McKerihen.

Rixon made a strong start and won the opening ends, but McKerihen gradually found her rhythm and edged a closely contested first set 8-7.

The Canadian then took control of the second set, consistently outdrawing Rixon and leaving her opponent with little opportunity to respond. McKerihen won the set 11-0 to secure the match.

Friday’s action

Friday’s programme was highlighted by Katryna Esposito’s bronze medal in the women’s -48kg judo category, but several other Maltese athletes were also in action, including Rachela Pace in athletics, James Zahra in judo and Connie Rixon in lawn bowls.

Pace narrowly misses long jump final

Rachela Pace competed in Group B of the women’s long jump qualification and made an encouraging start with a jump of 6.16 metres, immediately putting herself in contention for qualification.

She followed that with a 6.06m effort in the second round. With 6.23m required to secure one of the 12 qualifying places across the two groups, Pace needed a significant final attempt.

She produced an improved jump in the third round, but it was ruled a foul, leaving her in 14th place, just two positions outside the final.

Pace came within centimetres of her season’s best of 6.30m and was competitive in a field of 24 athletes.

Zahra bows out after strong judo start

James Zahra also began his judo contest against Vanuatu’s Alan Monthouel positively.

Zahra produced a combination of techniques, uchi-mata followed by ko-uchi-gake, which earned a yuko after his opponent landed on his side.

Monthouel appeared more comfortable during the groundwork exchanges and repeatedly attempted different grappling techniques.

Zahra initially managed to hold his opponent’s leg while being pinned, meaning the osaekomi hold could not begin. Once Monthouel freed his leg, however, he secured a yoko-shiho-gatame side four-corner hold for the full 20 seconds, earning the maximum score and an immediate victory.

Rixon produces mixed results

Rixon had earlier enjoyed success in the women’s singles against Jersey.

She settled quickly and won the opening set 7-4 before Jersey responded by taking the second set 5-4, forcing a tie-break.

With the contest decided by a single tie-break end, Rixon held her nerve to score two shots and win the decider 2-0.

Later in the evening, she faced England’s Katherine Read, the section leader and a seven-time Indoor Champion.

Rixon produced an excellent opening set, controlling the contest to win 8-5. She also made a strong start to the second set, taking the first couple of ends, but Read responded with a series of outstanding bowls to edge the set 8-7 and force another tie-break.

The decisive end went England’s way after Read delivered a crucial bowl, leaving Rixon with a narrow defeat.

With the lawn bowls competitions now completed for Malta, Team Malta’s final commitment at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games will be the Closing Ceremony on Sunday evening.