Nigel Si­mon

T&T's Abra­ham McLeod came up short once more in his quest to reach the semi­fi­nals of the men's 50m breast­stroke in heat six of nine at the 15th FI­NA World Long Course Swim­ming Cham­pi­onship at the Palau Sant Jor­di Swim­ming and Syn­chro­nised Are­na, Barcelona, Spain, yes­ter­day.The 21-year-old McLeod, was a dis­ap­point­ing ninth among the field of ten in 28.26 sec­onds on­ly ahead of Slove­nia's Marek Botik (28.39) and 41st over­all from 80 com­peti­tors.The win­ner of the heat was Czech Re­pub­lic's Petr Bartinek in 27.84 for 27th fastest over­all fol­lowed by Pana­ma's Edgar Cre­spon (27.89), Switzer­land's Mar­tin Schweiz­er (28.01), Turkey's Demir Ata­soy (28.04) and Ukrain­ian Ig­or Bo­rysik (28.07) to round out the top five.

Oth­ers in the heat were Colom­bia's Jorge Muril­lo (28.16), Lat­vian Niko­la­js Maske­lenko (28.20) and Ukraine's Mar­tin Mel­con­ian (28.21).It was the sec­ond swim of the Cham­pi­onship for McLeod af­ter he end­ed 50th over­all in the men's 100m breast­stroke heats on Sun­day's open­ing day with a third place fin­ish in heat three of eight.Mc Leod raced to the wall in a new na­tion­al record of one minute, 03.47 sec­onds be­hind Maskalenko (1:03.28) and Sene­gal's Mal­ick Fall (1:03.38).Al­so on Sun­day, the old­er of the Abra­ham broth­ers, 22-year-old Joshua McLeod, was the first of the three T&T swim­mers in ac­tion and placed fourth in his men's 50m but­ter­fly heat in 24.43 from lane sev­en in the ten-man heat to trail Por­tu­gal's Simao Mor­ga­do (24.20), Cana­da's Cole­man Allen (24.25) and Hun­gary's Bence Pu­lai (24.31) and 36th over­all.

The time was much faster than his gold medal win­ning time of 24.71 at last month's Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­can Con­fed­er­a­tion Cham­pi­onships in San Jose, Cos­ta Ri­ca.Olympic and World Short Course Cham­pi­onship bronze medal swim­mer George Bovell III will be the third and fi­nal T&T swim­mer to go in­to ac­tion, Fri­day when he com­petes in in the men's 50m freestyle pre­lim­i­nary heats in heat ten of 11.Bovell who turned 30 on Ju­ly 18 will go head-to-head with his USA ri­vals, An­tho­ny Ervin and Nathan Adri­an as well as Yoris Grand­jean (Bel­gium), Ken­ta Ito (Japan), Mar­co Or­si (Italy), Adam Brown (Great Britain), Shin­ri Sh­ioura (Japan), Trandafir and Sah­noune Ous­sama of Al­ge­ria for places in the semi­fi­nal and fi­nal to fol­low on Au­gust 3.This will be the sec­ond time that he will be com­pet­ing in the World Cham­pi­onship in Barcelona af­ter he was fifth in the 50m freestyle fi­nals ten years while he was sev­enth in Shang­hai, Chi­na two years ago in 22.04.

So far this sea­son, the T&T swim­mer is un­beat­en hav­ing won the men's 50m but­ter­fly (25.08) and the 50m breast­stroke, in a new na­tion­al record of 28.22 at last month's Cana­da Cup to add to his vic­to­ry at the TYR Jax50 freestyle, held in Flori­da, in April.Fol­low­ing the Cham­pi­onship, Bovell will turn his at­ten­tion to the FI­NA World Cup in which he was sec­ond over­all last year to Ervin.

The World Cup be­gins in Eind­hoven (Au­gust 7-8) and Berlin (Au­gust 10-11) im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the World Cham­pi­onships.Last year he re­bound­ed from a medal-less Lon­don 2012 Olympic Games–his fourth Olympics–with awe­some per­for­mances in the World Cup to claim 16 medals, sev­en gold and nine sil­ver for sec­ond over­all "Most Out­stand­ing Men's Swim­mer" be­hind Ervin.