Nigel Si­mon

Au­gust 20, 2004

A great bur­den of ex­pec­ta­tion was lift­ed off the broad shoul­ders of T&T's George Bovell III, when he end­ed his par­tic­i­pa­tion at the 28th Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, with a bronze medal yes­ter­day. The bronze medal for the 21-year-old Auburn Uni­ver­si­ty ju­nior came in the fi­nal of his pet event-the 200-me­tres in­di­vid­ual med­ley (IM) swim­ming event, af­ter he en­tered the fi­nal as the fifth-fastest qual­i­fi­er with a time of 2:00.31.

In the fi­nal, Bovell stepped up a gear and snatched the bronze medal in a new per­son­al best and Com­mon­wealth record time of one minute, 58.80 sec­onds. His new mark erased his pre­vi­ous best time of 1:59.49, which he had set at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in San­to Domin­go, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, last year.

Back then he lift­ed the peo­ple of T&T's hopes for an Olympic medal from him, as he made a record haul of two sil­ver and two bronze medals at those games. Since then, the pres­sure to win a medal at Athens had been on the mod­est Bovell, and he de­liv­ered with the back­ing of the na­tion's 1.5 mil­lion peo­ple-the first medal for a com­peti­tor from the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean at the games.

First to the wall was Amer­i­can phe­nom­e­non Michael Phelps, who won his fourth gold medal in a games record time of 1:57.14. Fel­low US swim­mer Ryan Lochte came in be­hind for the sil­ver medal in 1:58.78. Phelps' win­ning mark low­ered his pre­vi­ous Olympic record of 1:58.52, set in the se­mi-fi­nals on Wednes­day night.

Lin­ing up in lane two, Bovell-an Athens se­mi-fi­nal­ist in both of his pre­vi­ous events, the 200m and 100m freestyle-stuck to the plan of his coach Anil Roberts. Bovell clocked a good 26.20 sec­onds over the first 50 me­tres, the but­ter­fly leg, at the end of which he was sixth; then he moved up to third po­si­tion at the end of the back­stroke leg.

With 100 me­tres to go, Phelps was still clear of the field. By the end of the third leg, the 50-me­tres breast­stroke, Bovell had again gained valu­able dis­tance with a split of 33 sec­onds, mov­ing in­to sec­ond spot, close­ly fol­lowed by Lochte, Las­z­lo Cseh of Hun­gary and Brazil­ian Thi­a­go Pereira. In that last splash to the wall, Bovell slipped to third place, al­though he clocked a siz­zling 28.8 sec­onds for his best-ever time.

Com­ment­ing on the per­for­mance of his young swim­mer, Roberts, who to­geth­er with Bovell was flanked by well-wish­ers on their way out of the com­pe­ti­tion are­na, said: "I could not have asked for a more per­fect race from him." Bovell's fa­ther George Bovell II, who is the swim­ming team's man­ag­er, said now that the com­pe­ti­tion was over his son would use the rest of his stay in Greece to do some sight­see­ing be­fore re­turn­ing home to Trinidad lat­er in Au­gust.