Ke­vim Felmine

George Bovell III's fans were ec­sta­t­ic but anx­ious af­ter his su­perb per­for­mances in yes­ter­day's 50-me­tre freestyle semi­fi­nal splash at the 2012 Olympics in Lon­don, Eng­land. Now they're hope­ful that Bovell, a for­mer world record hold­er, will cop the gold medal in to­day's fi­nal, which is ex­pect­ed to take place at 2.32 pm lo­cal time. Bovell placed first in the heats and was sec­ond in his semi­fi­nal in the af­ter­noon. At the Bovell fam­i­ly's Mal­abar Farms store at Long Cir­cu­lar Road, St James, more than a dozen work­ers and cus­tomers paused for a few min­utes yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, their eyes glued to the tele­vi­sion for the semi­fi­nal round. Bovell's par­ents are in Lon­don to sup­port him. There were tense mo­ments, but those gath­ered had al­ready pre­dict­ed that their sport­ing hero would make it in­to to­day's fi­nals.

Anx­ious­ly await­ing the semi­fi­nal round, which start­ed at 2.30, se­nior ac­coun­tant Al­li­son Chalmers said she was ex­pect­ing him to de­liv­er a good show­ing. Ex­cite­ment filled the store and as the 29-year-old 2004 Olympic bronze medal­list made his way out of the dress­ing room, cheers be­gan to ring out. From the sound of the gun, there were non-stop chants of "Go, George, Go George!" and as the swim­mer forged his way to the front of the pack, there were screams. Bovell fin­ished the race in sec­ond po­si­tion, but there were no dis­ap­point­ed faces, on­ly ex­pres­sions of ju­bi­la­tion. Long-time friend of the fam­i­ly David Ho­sein said: "I am feel­ing proud. He did his best and his best is yet to come." Ho­sein said he knew Bovell since the ath­lete was on­ly nine, and had the priv­i­lege of tak­ing him around to train.