T&T's Olympic bronze medal swimmer, George Bovell III just missed out on a bronze medal finish in the men's 50m freestyle final at the 12th Eindhoven Swim Cup, which also acts as the Dutch Olympic Trials when he placed fourth at Pieter van den Hoogenband Swimming Stadium, yesterday.
Competing from lane seven in the final, BovelI III, who was third in the same event at the Sixth Trofeo Citta di Milan Swimming Championship, in Milan, Italy, last month in 22.74 seconds, was faster this time out with a time of 22.49.
However, the T&T ace was .02 hundredths of a second out of a medal as the trio of Suriname's Renzo Tjon A Joe (22.33), Germany's Damian Wierling (22.43) and Thom de Boer (22.47) took the gold, silver and bronze medals respectively.
Fifth was Belgium's Glenn Surgeloose in 22.52 followed by Hong Kong's Geoffrey Cheah (22.58), Jesse Puts (22.59) and Ben Schwietert (22.78).
Prior to the final, the 32-year-old Bovell III swimming in the semifinals heat two out of lane two was fourth home in 22.68 seconds to trail de Boer (22.42), and the pair of Puts and Cheah, who both clocked 22.54 while Schwietert's got home in 22.69 to just sneak into the gold medal splash.
The other finishers in the heat were Jeroen Baars (23.08), Laurent Bams (23.13) and Portugal's Gustavo Madureira in 23.55.
Advancing to the final from semifinal one were the trio of Tjon A Joe who won in 22.47 ahead of Wierling (22.58) and Surgeloose (22.75).
Others in the splash were Belgium's Pieter Timmers (23.03), Serbian Andrej Barna (23.12) and Nylis Kortsnaje (23.12), Belgium's Dries Vangoetsenhoven (23.30) and Tom Lommers (23.37).
Earlier on in the morning session heats, Bovell in only his second meet of the year, touched the wall fourth in 22.84 seconds for fourth spot, but the ninth fastest time overall.
The winner of his heat was third fastest overall qualifier de Boer (22.57) ahead of Cheah (22.71) and Schwietert (22.77) while Baars (23.10) and Madureira (23.50) also qualified from the heat to the semifinals.
Holland's Puts who competed in heat nine topped the overall heats in 22.37 and he was joined from his event by Wierling (22.61), Timmers (22.82), Korstanje (22.98) and Barna (23.18).
Tjon A Joe won heat eight in 22.40 for the second best time in the heats overall and also qualifying from was Belgium's Surgeloose (22.74), Bams (23.22), Lommers (23.46) and Vangoetsenhoven (23.51), who had the 16th best time overall.
A three-time Pan American Games 50m freestyle gold medalist, Bovell II will have today (Thursday) off before he returns to competition tomorrow (Friday) for the 50m backstroke which he enters as the fourth seed with a time of 25.70 seconds.
The top three seeded entrants are Carl-Louis Scwarz (24.98), Guy Barnea (25.17) and Christian Diener (25.62)
The ace T&T swimmer is also expected to swim a Time Trial in the 50m breaststroke, the same event he placed fourth in in Italy with a time of 28.50.