T&T Olympic bronze medal winner George Bovell III was expected to go after more medals last night after he qualified to compete in both the men’s 50m freestyle and 50m backstroke A finals at the annual Canada Cup at the Montreal Olympic Park 50m Pool yesterday. He was the first and second fastest swimmer in the 50m freestyle and backstroke heats respectively, contested earlier in the day. First up, the 28-year-old 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 to be one of five Club Wolverine swimmers in the ten-man final. A distant second was Luke Peddie in 23.25 followed by Robert Savulich (23.30), Richard Hortness (23.40), Duje Draganja (23.45), Martyn Forde (23.49), Colin Russell (23.56), Barry Murphy (23.59), Thomas Gossland (23.77) and Oleksandr Loginov (23.79).
Four events later Bovell, a seven-time World Championship finalists clocked 26.45 seconds to finish behind Charles Francis (26.22) qualifying for the 50m backstroke final. Third fastest was Thibault Delecluse (26.87) followed by Jeffrey Swanston (26.99), his brother Matthew Swanston (27.01), Andrew Ford (27.20), Michael Wynalda (27.39), Adam Best (27.64), Shawn Nee (28.05) and Felix Cote-Leduc (28.14). On Friday night, the US-based Bovell, who is using the meet as his final warm up for this month’s London Olympic Games—his fourth—was third behind his clubmates Milorad Cavic (49.32) and Savulich (49.58).
The other finishers in the ten-man final were Wynalda (50.75), Hortness (50.93), Blake Worsley (50.97), Hassaan Abdel-Khalik (51.34), Ryan Feeley (51.37), Roman Willets (51.42) and Gossland (51.61). Bovell was second in the sixth of eighth 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 achieved by 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 is 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