T&T's George Bovell ended the 11th FINA World Short Course Swimming Championship on a high when he swam to bronze in the men's 100 metres individual medley at the Sinan Erdem Arena, Istanbul, Turkey, yesterday.
Bovell who had the slowest reaction time of 0.74 seconds, found himself in fourth spot at the halfway stage with a split of 23.73 after the butterfly and backstroke swims to trail his Australian World Cup rival, Kenneth To (22.90), Slovenian Peter Mankoc (23.46) and USA's Ryan Lochte (23.52).
However, on the second-half of the race (breaststroke and freestyle), Bovell, a four-time Olympian and bronze medal winner, turned it up a notch and clocked 27.93 to touch the wall in 51.66 for this country's first medal at the FINA World Championship.
Lochte became the first athlete to finish the men's 200m IM in under 1:50 minutes. He completed the double when he raced home in 51.21 seconds, while To was second in 51.38.
Mankoc was fourth in 52.51 followed by Sweden's Simon Sjodin (52.63), USA's Conor Dwyer (52.83) and the Japanese duo, Takuro Fujii (53.11) and world 400m IM champion, Daiya Seto (53.15).
Reacting to the achievement, Sport Minister Anil Roberts, coach of Bovell, described the feat as a proud moment for Bovell, his family and T&T. Roberts noted that Bovell continued to fly the national colours with distinction.
"He is an inspiration to young athletes, especially swimmers, here at home and throughout the region. International success in sport is not determined by our size but by the intensity of our passions, our convictions and the willingness to consistently work hard to achieve excellence. I congratulate George on this latest achievement and for giving us another historic moment to celebrate."
Other qualifiers for the gold medal splash were Sjodin (52.71), Dwyer (52.74) and Mankoc (52.80) while Israel's Gal Nevo (53.25), Denmark's Daniel Skaaning (54.05) and Poland's Jan Switkowski
(54.21) were the other finishers.
To was the top qualifier in the first semifinal in 51.47 seconds.
Bovell came within 0.04 seconds of a bronze medal in the men's 50m freestyle final on Friday. He splashed home in 21.03 seconds, for fourth spot in the men's 50m freestyle final.
Russian Vladimir Morozov won in 20.55 seconds, to beat Olympic champion, France's Florent Manaudou (20.88) and USA's Anthony Ervin (20.99), Bovell's main rival in the event on the World Cup circuit into silver and bronze medal finishers.