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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Com­mon­wealth Games 2014

Bovell splashes into 50m free final

by

20140728

George Bovell splashed some life back in­to the T&T camp at the Com­mon­wealth Games here in Glas­gow, Scot­land, yes­ter­day, when he booked his spot in the 50 me­tres freestyle fi­nal, which is card­ed for lat­er to­day at the Toll­cross Swim­ming Cen­tre.

How­ev­er, there was heart­break for T&T at the Ham­p­den Park Sta­di­um as medal hope­fuls Ke­ston Bled­man and Richard Thomp­son failed to ad­vance to the fi­nal of the men's 100m.

Nei­ther was there any luck on the women's side as Kai Selvon and Ka­maria Du­rant were al­so elim­i­nat­ed in their re­spec­tive heats.

Bovell clocked 22.22 sec­onds, to fin­ish third in the sec­ond semi­fi­nal, pro­duc­ing the fourth quick­est time of the eight fi­nal­ists.

The medal race is ex­pect­ed to be in­tense as the lo­cal swim­mer will be chal­lenged by Aus­tralians James Mag­nussen and Cameron McEn­voy, who took gold and sil­ver re­spec­tive­ly in the 100m freestyle, the night be­fore. The oth­ers are Ben­jamin Proud, al­so of Aus­tralia, South Africans Roland Schoe­man and Bradley Tandy and Eng­lish­men Adam Brown and Matt Abood.

It was a stark con­trast to what was un­fold­ing across the way at Ham­p­den, when Bled­man and Thomp­son made their ex­it from the 100m event.

Bled­man's 10.24 put him out of con­tention, de­spite plac­ing third in his heat. Thomp­son too was third in his heat but his time of 10.19, though faster than his coun­try­man's was not good enough.

A vis­i­bly up­set Thomp­son took some time be­fore re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the me­dia.

"I just didn't show up ready. Sor­ry to dis­ap­point every­body be­cause I know just as I had high hopes and ex­pec­ta­tions for my­self, there were a lot of peo­ple ex­pect­ing the same.

"I just didn't bring it to­day (yes­ter­day). I didn't do well so dis­ap­point­ing per­for­mance," said Thomp­son. "Now it's all about get­ting ready for the 4x100. I have to put this be­hind me and get ready for that. Hope­ful­ly we do bet­ter and medal. We have to re­group and get ready for the 4x100."

Lat­er, Ja­maican Ke­mar Bai­ley-Cole went on to win the gold medal in 10 sec­onds. Tak­ing the sil­ver was Adam Gemili (10.10) of Eng­land and Nick­el Ash­meade (10.12) of Ja­maica copped the bronze.

Nige­ria's Bless­ing Ok­ag­bare topped the women's fi­nal in 10.85 while Ja­maica duo Veron­i­ca Camp­bell-Brown (11.03) and Ker­ron Stew­art (11.07), were sec­ond and third, re­spec­tive­ly.

Selvon and Du­rant re­spec­tive times of 11.59 and 11.70, were not good enough for them to progress out of the semi­fi­nals.

In the women's 400m semi­fi­nals, both Shaw­na Fer­min (53.83) and Domonique Williams (54.63) fad­ed in their heats to not ad­vance ei­ther.

Ayan­na Alexan­der, though, ex­celled on the field, pro­gress­ing to the medal round of the women's triple jump. She had a best at­tempt of 13.78 to put her in sec­ond spot in group A and over­all go­ing in­to the fi­nal.

In the morn­ing ses­sion, all three en­tries in the men's 400m event, Jar­rin Solomon, Ren­ny Quow and Lalonde Gor­don, reached the semi­fi­nals of the men's 400m event.

Solomon was up first and topped the open­ing heat in 45.69. Quow al­so won his heat, clock­ing 45.86, strolling over the line ahead of his com­peti­tors. He seemed to be in some dis­com­fort fol­low­ing the race but brushed it off say­ing: "I just want to stay re­lax and smooth as pos­si­ble. I feel good no in­juries. "

Gor­don looked com­fort­able in his heat, tak­ing sec­ond place in 45.84 be­hind Eng­land's Mar­tyn Rooney (45.57).

Box­ing

Box­er Aaron Prince knocked off Ba­hami­an God­frey Stra­chan in the Men's mid­dleweight (75 kg) round of 16 match at the SECC.

His next bout will be to­mor­row against the pre­vi­ous Com­mon­wealth Games bronze medal­list In­dia's Vi­jen­der Singh Beni­w­al.

"I feel ex­cit­ed about my up­com­ing match. I am just ask­ing to every­one to con­tin­ue to sup­port me,"

To­day though Michael Alexan­der fights Ba­jan Co­bia Breedy in the round of 16 of the Men's light­weight (60 kg)

Net­ball

T&T's net­ball team lost its third straight match, this time to No 1 team in the world Aus­tralia, 69-34 at the SECC.

Again, the "Ca­lyp­so Girls strug­gled to get the ball to the shoot­ers, on­ly get­ting 52 at­tempts at goal com­pared to the Aus­tralians' 80.

Joelisa Coop­er led the scor­ing for T&T with 15 goals from 24 at­tempts in a match which T&T trailed from the first pass.

Shoot­ers Anas­tas­cia Wil­son and Joelisa Coop­er found it tough to get go­ing, bare­ly get­ting enough touch­es on the ball as T&T trailed af­ter the first pe­ri­od 16-9.

Play con­tin­ued down­ward for the T&T as it added on­ly five goals in the sec­ond ses­sion to have a 23-goal (38-15) deficit at the half.

Wil­son, the goal-shoot­er, who scored nine goals off 13 at­tempts, was then re­placed by young­ster Kali­fa Mc­Collin.

Aus­tralia still dom­i­nat­ed and pushed the lead to 27 goals (50-23) by the end of the third.

The fi­nal pe­ri­od was the on­ly time the lo­cal net­ballers scored in dou­ble-fig­ures 11, to reach 34 but de­fend­ers could not find a way to slow the Aus­tralians, who con­nect­ed 19, to seal the 35-goal vic­to­ry. Coop­er (15/24) shot with 63 per cent ac­cu­ra­cy to lead T&T. Mc­Collin scored the oth­er 10 goals from 15 tries.

The lo­cal net­ballers will be back on the court to­day against Eng­land in their fi­nal match.

Hock­ey

Yes­ter­day, T&T's women's team suf­fered an­oth­er loss, go­ing down to In­dia 14-0. To­day the men's team takes on Malaysia, hop­ing to get its first win of the Games.

Shoot­ing

No medal for Roger Daniel in his favourite event, the 50m Pis­tol down at the Bar­ry Bud­don Shoot­ing Cen­tre. He placed sev­enth in the fi­nal round with a to­tal of 90.5 points.

Coun­try­man Rhod­ney Al­lan al­so took part in the event but he was elim­i­nat­ed in the qual­i­fi­ca­tion round af­ter plac­ing 18th. On­ly the top eight moved on.

Daniel had placed third to ad­vance to the fi­nal but could not get shoot his way to sil­ver as he did in the event back in 2010 in Del­hi, In­dia.

How­ev­er, both Daniel and Al­lan will have an­oth­er try to­day at a medal when they com­pete in the 25m rapid fire pis­tol qual­i­fy­ing round.

In the 50m ri­fle prone event, Mar­lon Moses did not make it out of the qual­i­fy­ing round, plac­ing 31st with score of 599.5.

Nor­ris Gomes and Michael Perez were 28th and 29th, re­spec­tive­ly when the in­ter­me­di­ate re­sults were re­leased in the Queen's Prize in­di­vid­ual shoot­ing com­pe­ti­tion.

To­day, T&T's squash play­ers will be back in ac­tion to com­pete in the mixed, men's and women's dou­bles con­tests while both men's and women's ta­ble ten­nis play­ers will par­tic­i­pate in the sin­gles event.


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