Nigel Si­mon

T&T's Olympic bronze medal swim­mer George Bovell III will end his com­pet­i­tive prepa­ra­tions for this month's Lon­don Olympic Games when he com­petes at the an­nu­al Cana­da Cup-Que­bec Cup this week­end. The four-day meet fea­tur­ing swim­mers from Ger­many, Ar­genti­na, Spain, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Mex­i­co and Hol­land takes place at the Mon­tre­al Olympic Park 50m Pool from to­day un­til Sun­day. How­ev­er, Bovell III will not be in ac­tion un­til to­mor­row in the 100m freestyle while he al­so com­petes in the 100m back­stroke and 50m back­stroke and freestyle splash­es. Over the years, this pres­ti­gious and ex­cit­ing in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion has high­light­ed sev­er­al world-renowned swim­mers such as Michael Phelps (USA), An­na­may Pierse (Cana­da), Brent Hay­den (Cana­da), Ryan Cochrane (Cana­da), George Bovell III (T&T) and Bronte Bar­ratt (Aus­tralia), to name a few and once again an in­ter­na­tion­al field has been as­sem­bled with the Olympic Games un­der a month away.

Pri­or to com­pet­ing in Mon­tre­al, Bovell last faced in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion at the Long­horn Aquat­ics Elite In­vi­ta­tion­al Meet in Texas dur­ing the first week of June. At the meet, the top T&T swim­mer 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). Look­ing ahead to the four days of com­pe­ti­tion, Bovell III, who turned 28 on Ju­ly 18 said he in­tends to race back­stroke events be­cause they com­pli­ment his freestyle train­ing. In terms of his prepa­ra­tions for his fourth Olympic Games ap­pear­ance Bovell III said: "I am now just start­ing to back off my work load this week as we "glide down" to the Olympics ex­act­ly a month away. "With the rest I ex­pect to gain easy speed. At this point it would be great to be fast, but the times are unim­por­tant. The em­pha­sis is on ex­e­cut­ing the many de­tails that the dif­fer­ent events con­sist of cor­rect­ly. Bovell III al­so com­ment­ed on the re­cent US swim­ming tri­als where Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte, the two men who fin­ished ahead of him in the 200m in­di­vid­ual med­ley fi­nal at the Athens Greece Olympics in 2004 went head-to-head say­ing both men look like they will be very strong in Lon­don.

"I paid spe­cial at­ten­tion to the form of my Amer­i­can ri­vals in the sprint events. Nathan Adri­an looked very strong in the 100m freestyle and I ex­pect­ed him to sure­ly be on the team for the 50m freestyle as well but was sur­prised when he was beat­en by An­tho­ny Ervin and Cullen Jones. "The in­ter­est­ing thing here is that I have beat­en Jones and Ervin (who I will face in Lon­don) all year but haven't man­aged to beat Adri­an in ages. "The ques­tion here is can they re­peat this peaked form in just one month. Bovell III, a sev­en-time World Cham­pi­onship fi­nal­ists al­so not­ed that the T&T 50m freestyle record (21.20 secs) is faster than the Amer­i­can record (21.40-Jones) for the event. He al­so point­ed out that Ervin and Jones, who are the two fastest Amer­i­cans in the freestyle sprints both have African-Amer­i­can her­itage. He added: "I hope this serves to fur­ther dis­cred­it the ig­no­rant stereo­type that African peo­ple are not good swim­mers, and will serve to in­spire more young peo­ple of African her­itage to fol­low in their foot­steps.

As for Olympic and World cham­pi­on, Brazil­ian Cae­sar Ci­lo and his oth­er ri­vals, Bovell-a dou­ble Pan Amer­i­can gold and sil­ver medal win­ner said he ex­pects them to be fast as well. "I be­lieve they have shown their cards when they peaked ear­li­er this sea­son for their Olympic tri­als", said the five-time NCAA in­di­vid­ual cham­pi­on. "We know what they are ca­pa­ble of, where­as I have not peaked yet since last sum­mer. "The way I see it fo­cus­ing on them is use­less. I do what I can when I can to pre­pare and when the time comes I will sim­ply swim my own race.