…whips field in 50m free, backstroke finals
T&T Olympic bronze medal winner George Bovell III sounded a strong warning to all his rivals for this month’s London Olympic Games, his fourth, when he whipped his rivals in both the men’s A 50m freestyle and backstroke finals on the last night of the Canada Cup on Sunday. Swimming out of lane four at the the Montreal Olympic Park 50m Pool, the 28-year-old Bovell III, a seven-time World Championship finalist, touched the wall in 22.01 seconds well ahead of his Club Wolverine team-mate Duje Draganja, who ended in 22.97, while another of his training partners, Robert Savulic, took bronze in 23 seconds flat. Barry Murphy, the fourth of five Club Wolverine swimmers in the ten-man final was next in 23.08 followed by Olympian Swim club’s Luke Peddie (23.09), Club Wolverine’s Martyn Forde (23.50), Oleksandrn Loginov (23.52), Richard Hortness (23.57), Thomas Gossland (23.64) and Ryan Feeley (23.78).
Earlier on Sunday morning, Bovell III, who earned bronze in the 100m freestyle on Friday night in 49.90 seconds topped the field in the 50m freestyle heats in 22.31 seconds ahead of Peddie (23.25), Savulich (23.30), Hortness (23.40), Draganja (23.45), Forde (23.49), Colin Russell (23.56), Murphy (23.59), Gossland (23.77) and Loginov (23.79). And in his third and final event of the meet after skipping the 100m backstroke on Saturday, the top T&T swimmer outclassed the field in the men’s 50m backstroke in 25.80 seconds to beat Charles Francis (26.04) and Jeffrey Swanston (26.49) into second and third place respectively. The other finishers in the final were Andrew Ford (26.58), Michael Wynalda (26.71), Matthew Swanston (26.91), Thibault Delecluse (27.08), Kevin Bustamante (28.07), Felix Cote-Leduc (28.15) and Shawn Nee (28.25). In the morning heats, Bovell, a double gold and silver Pan American Games medalist, clocked 26.45 seconds to finish behind Francis (26.22) as the top qualifiers for the 50m backstroke final. Third fastest was Delecluse (26.87) followed by Jeffrey Swanston (26.99), his brother Matthew Swanston (27.01), Forde (27.20), Wynalda (27.39), Adam Best (27.64), Nee (28.05) and Cote-Leduc (28.14).
On Friday night, the US-based Bovell, who was using the meet as his final competitive warm-up for the Olympic Games later this month was third behind his club-mates Milora Cavic (49.32) and Savulich (49.58) in the men’s 100m freestyle A final.
The other finishers in the ten-man final were Wynalda (50.75), Hortness (50.93), Blake Worsley (50.97), Hassaan Abdel-Khalik (51.34), Feeley (51.37), Roman Willets (51.42) and Gossland (51.61). This after Bovell was second in the sixth of eight heats in 50.60 behind Cavic (50.20) while Willets (51.18), Feeley (51.43), Justin Glanda (51.71), Joe Bartoch (52.05), Keegan Zanalta (52.86), Michael Karnakov (53.28), Luke Hall (52.45) and Nicholas Lafleur (53.14) were the other finishers in the heat.
Overall, the other top ten qualifying times for the A-final were Wynalda (50.88) and Savulich (50.97) who won heats eight and seven respectively, Hortness (51.11), Willets, Worsley (51.20), Abdel-Khalik (51.28), Gossland (51.38) and Feeley. The meet in Canada was the first for Bovelll since he won a gold and two bronze medals at the Longhorn Aquatics Elite Invitational Meet in Texas during the first week of June. At the meet, Bovell won gold in the 50m freestyle (22.11 secs) while he was third in both the 100m backstroke (56.06 secs) and 100m freestyle (49.84 secs).
-Nigel Simon
Source: www.guardian.co.tt