Olympic bronze medal swimmer and two-time World Championship bronze medallist, George Bovell, swam to a gold medal in the men's 100-metre individual medley when the 2014 FINA/MASTBANK Swimming World Cup splashed off at the Hamad Aquatic Centre, Al Aziziyah, Doha, Qatar, yesterday.
Swimming from lane four in the eight-man field, the 31-year-old Bovell found himself in second spot after the first two-legs in 24.55 seconds behind Australian Bobby Hurley (24.33) while South African Leith Shankland was third in 24.71.
However, over the second-half of the race, Bovell got home in 28.25 for a total time of 52.80, well ahead of Shankland (53.77) and Austrian Martin Spitzer (54.77) while Hurley faded to fourth in 55.13.
It was his first gold in the 100m IM in Doha after he took bronze last year (51.87) and silver in 2012 (51.87).
Bovell has now won 30 medals at the World Cup.
He won 13 medals (one gold, five silver, seven bronze) last year compared to his 16 medals (nine gold and seven silver) in 2012.
The others to finish were Finland's Ari-Pekka Liukkonen (56.03), Austrian Sebastian Steffan (56.16), USA's Mike Alexandrov (56.38) and Serbian, Aron Sinkovic (58.17).
In the morning session, Bovell who was coming off a below-par showing at the Commonwealth Games in Scotland, was also the top qualifier after he won the second and final heat in 54.81. He was ahead of Spitzer (55.25), Hurley (56.33), Steffan (57.00) and Sinkovic (58.43).
Shankland won heat one in 55.11 and was trailed home by Alexandrov (55.65) and Liukkonen (56.42).
Bovell had earlier missed a place in the men's 50m breaststroke final, after ending third in heat two, in 27.51 seconds, behind South African Giulio Zorzi (27.20) and Russia's Andrei Nikolaev (27.21) for the tenth fastest time overall.
In addition to Zorzi and Nikolaev, the other qualifiers for the final were Italian Fabio Scozzoli (26.60), Switzerland's Martin Schweizer (26.92) and Slovakian Tomas Blobucnik (27.25), the top three swimmers in heat two who had the first, third and seventh fastest qualifying times respectively.
South African Roland Schoeman turned up the heat on his rivals with a time of 26.35 in the final to beat Italian Fabion Scozzoli (26.54) and Switzerland's Martin Schweizer (26.80) into second and third respectively while Zorzi was fourth in 26.94 and Nikolaev (27.01), fifth.
Today, Bovell will compete in his pet event, the 50m freestyle, in which he has won a World Championship Long Course bronze medal.
He will swim in the fourth and final heat from lane five against Reynier Pretorius (South Africa), Tengfei Shi (China), Konrad Czerniak (Poland), USA's Josh Schneider, Austrian Martin Spitzer, Shankland, Sascha Subarsky, also of Austria, and Lebanon's Charlie Salameh.
The trio of Schoeman, Germany's Steffan Deibler (Germany) and Aaron Sinkvic (Serbia) will compete in heat three while Japan's Kenta Ito goes in heat two.
In 2012, Bovell won silver in the 50m freestyle (21.06) and last year he was fourth in 21.31.
Following the two-day meet which ends today, Bovell and his fellow competitors will journey to Dubai, United Arab Emirates (August 31-September 1); Hong Kong (September 29-30); Moscow, Russia (October 4-5); Tokyo, Japan (October 28-29) and Singapore (November 1-2) before turning their attention to the 12th FINA World Swimming Championships (25m), in Doha from December 3 - 7, 2014.