The Malta Canoe Federation has requested that a club house be built within the plans for the Traditional Boat Centre in the Cottonera area.

This is aimed at enhancing the sports facilities in the locality and will also generate considerable tourism revenue by offering both a sea kayaking centre and importantly off season sprint training for athletes in countries where winter training is impracticable. 

The federation has been facing the challenge of locating such a ‘club house’ with the capacity for dragon boats, sprint and marathon Olympic class racers and surf ski’s as well as dedicated gym, changing facilities and a social area that is adjacent to paddle-able flat water for several years. With such locations disappearing to big businesses or encroached by marina pontoons, alternative sites are diminishing rapidly.

Although it has been suggested such a centre would enhance safety at sea in the same way as a motor racing track would on our roads, it is equally demonstrative of what our athletes are missing out on in comparison to other countries. 

The federation's athletes do manage to train on the few, yet diminishing flat water sites that remain. The federation has sought several other flat water sites, but as soon as the federation has put these on the radar they have attracted the attention of commercial entities. The affect being that the federation and the sport has for the past 24 years missed out on obtaining its own property and offering its athletes the most basic of facilities, the federation said.