Ana Culic (right) and Thea Grima Buttigieg in action during the 2025 GSSE. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli
It was a glorious final day of competition for the Maltese artistic swimmers at the Games of the Small States of Europe after securing two gold, one silver, and a bronze at the Selleders Sports Complex in La Vella.
The result was a real show of force from the Maltese team who were handed a major boost at the start of the day when the judging panel of the competition upheld Malta’s protest against the result of Friday’s Duet Technical routine which had seen Ana Culic and Thea Grima Buttigieg relegated to third place after some questional judging by the tournament officials.
But yesterday morning, the competition judges met to analyse Malta’s complaint, which contested the incongruencies in the points system and the technical interpretation of the judges.
After a few minutes of deliberation, the panel upheld Malta’s protest and 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.
There was more medal success for Team Malta when competition started, as in the Solo Free routine, Zea Montfort was second overall on 172.9675, just behind world no. 4 Jasmine Verbana, of San Marino, who took gold with 187.9350 points.
Thea Grima Buttigieg took the bronze medal with a total score of 138.7475.
Then, the women due free was next and the Maltese duo of Culic and Grima Buttigieg go the second gold medal of the Games when topping the charges with a dominant score of 175.0921.
Andorra’s Mariona Casas Montejo and Aran Van Den E. Sanabre were a distant second on 143.0654.
The bronze medal went to Liechtenstein with a score of 140.9271.
National coach Michelle Hubner could not hide her pride with the team’s performance after finishing the Games with two gold medals, two silver medals and two bronze.
“I am extremely proud of the national team girls and the team around us because they gave us a lot of support,” Hubner said.
“I am extremely proud of the individual performances of Zea Montfort and Thea Grima Buttigieg. Zea swam exceptionally, both in the tech and free. I cannot be prouder as they did their best and fought hard for it. So I cannot be more proud of what Malta did today.”
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