Benny Pace
Benny Pace began his working career as a radio officer on the Malta to Sicily ferry, The Star of Malta. Later, he joined the Signal Squadron until the Services rundown when he took up employment with the government service as a clerical officer. Pace started his sports journalist career in 1957 with the launching of his popular weekly Soccer Magazine.
Three years later, he produced, edited and published The Sporting Star, a weekly sports newspaper. For a number of years in the fifties and sixties, Pace was assistant editor to Robbie DeCesare for the popular football Annual.
He is also the author of many sports publications about football and, for many years, was responsible for the publication of Valletta FC’s magazines and programmes. His unwavering love for sport meant that Pace was also involved in broadcasting and produced several programmes on Radio Malta, Super One and RTK.
His best-known programme however, was the History of Maltese Sport, an 18-part series that was broadcast on TVM in 2001. Pace was one of the pioneers of the national team supporters club in 1958. Since then, he remained closely associated with Maltese football and compiled the national team’s section in Lewis Portelli’s famous publication, The Football Year Book, which was published between 1987 and 2007.
Administrative career In his long and eventful administrative career, Pace was the first president of the Darts Association, the Basketball Association and the Malta Billiards and Snooker Association. For a time, he was also involved in the Malta Boxing Association.
Pace was also an active member of the National Sports Board, the Għaqda Kittieba Sport, the Maltese Olympic Committee, Valletta’s Waterpolo Club and of course, his beloved Valletta C wherehe served as secretary formany years.
He was also the founder of the Sportivi Nazzjonali and organised the contests between 1960 and 1964. Pace was also the Sports Editor of Il-Poplu (1958-73), Il-Mument (1972-1985) and In-Nazzjon Tagħna (1970-1985).
He travelled extensively to cover sporting events such as the Olympic Games, the commonwealth games and the Mediterranean Games. Pace also reported international football matches played by the Maltese national team. In 2007, Pace won the coveted Sports Journalism Award and that year, he was also inducted in the Maltese Olympic Committee Hall of Fame.
Benny passed away on 25th February 2010, he was 74 years old. Benny was described as “a pillar of Valletta FC and Maltese sport in general”.
Source: times of malta
