Malta wins 11th gold medal as artistic swimming duo Culic, Grima Buttigieg handed top-placing as protest upheld

Team Malta were awarded their 11th gold medal of the 2025 Games of the Small States of Europe after Thea Grima Buttigieg and Ana Culic were promoted to first place in the duet technical routine after their protest against Friday’s result was upheld by the organisers.

On Friday, Culic teamed up with Thea Zammit Buttigieg and produced a solid performance that initially earned them 196.4183, with the Maltese coaches left irate by the harsh penalties incurred by the Maltese duo.

However, more drama was in store as the Andorra duo Zoe Palau Alcaide and Jasmine Serrano Steksova jumped to the top of the standings when scoring 198.6392.

The Maltese duo looked set to take silver when Andorra 2’s duo Mariona Casas Monteja and Aran Van den Sanabre took the water, and their performance earned them 192.5708, which put them in third place.

But incredibly, the judges declared Andorra 2 as the silver medallist at the expense of Malta to the surprise of the Maltese clan, who immediately protested along with Liechtenstein.

The Maltese protested against the inconsistency of scoring given during the competition and the technical interpretation of the judges.

On Saturday morning, the competition’s judging panel met to discuss the protest and ruled in favour of Malta as they found an error of judgment in Culic and Buttigieg’s performance and increased their score to 206.3200, which lifted them to the gold medal position.

Andorra took the silver while Liechtenstein was promoted to the bronze medal position ahead of Andorra’s second outfit.

Following this result, Team Malta has now seen their medal tally improve to 11 gold, 17 silver, 16 bronze, which means that they not only achieved their best-ever performance in a foreign GSSE but are on the brink of securing the country’s second-best ever showing in a GSSE, superceding Malta 2003 where the team had won 11 gold medals 18 silver and 15 bronze.