Swim­mer George Bovell III and squash duo, Col­in Ra­mas­ra and Ker­rie Sam­ple came in for high praise from T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee pres­i­dent, Lar­ry Ro­many fol­low­ing their ex­ploits at the 21st Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games in Mayaguez, Puer­to Ri­co. Bovell swam to T&T's first gold medal of the Games in a record per­for­mance in the men's 50-me­tre freestyle on Wednes­day night. A three-time Olympian and Athen's Greece bronze medal swim­mer, Bovell cel­e­brat­ed his 27th birth­day yes­ter­day by help­ing T&T to a sil­ver medal in the 4x100-me­tre freestyle re­lay.

He al­so got a sil­ver medal in the men's 50-me­tre back­stroke fi­nal on Thurs­day night in 26.08 sec­onds and was fourth in the 100-me­tre freestyle fi­nal. Ro­many de­scribed Bovell as a young man with tremen­dous dig­ni­ty, in­tegri­ty, courage and class. "He has the heart of a cham­pi­on and war­rior. He is a true pa­tri­ot. On his birth­day, he just missed a medal in the 100-me­tre freestyle. To put aside that dis­ap­point­ment and re­turn to win a medal showed the mer­it and char­ac­ter of the in­di­vid­ual. There is no quit in him. He has an in­domitable will and spir­it."

Ro­many�al­so said there was a lot at stake for the ath­letes and teams com­pet­ing at�the CAC Games�as a re­quire­ment for se­lec­tion for the Com­mon­wealth Games in Del­hi, In­dia sched­uled for Oc­to­ber. In ad­di­tion,�the lo­cal Olympic Com­mit­tee pol­i­cy is that con­sid­er­a­tion for Olympic se­lec­tion in­cludes par­tic­i­pa­tion at CAC, Pan Am and Com­mon­wealth Games. "George is one of�this coun­try's�world�lev­el ath­letes who the pub­lic should not take for grant­ed. "He is an in­spi­ra­tion to the young peo­ple of the na­tion and his per­for­mances at these Games are al­ways a boost for the morale of the en­tire del­e­ga­tion. He is a pos­i­tive role mod­el"

The duo of Ra­mas­ra and Sam­ple cap­tured T&T's first ever CAC Games medal in squash on Thurs­day in Bo­go­ta, Colom­bia. They fin­ished sec­ond to a Mex­i­can pair in the mixed dou­bles fi­nal 11-7 11-4. With the 2010 Com­mon­wealth Game just three months away, the his­toric achieve­ment en­hances Ram­sara and Sam­ple's chances of par­tic­i­pat­ing in Del­hi. Ro­many said the ef­forts of the pair were coura­geous. "Ram­sara re­cent­ly lost his moth­er. To rise above that per­son­al tragedy to be part of squash his­to­ry is coura­geous to say the least."

Ro­many not­ed that high fit­ness lev­els were an es­sen­tial fac­tor if lo­cal sports­men and women want to re­al­is­ti­cal­ly achieve world class lev­el. "Na­tion­al Sport Or­gan­i­sa­tions must be hon­est and dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween their so­cial/recre­ation­al ath­letes and those who are�high per­for­mance�lev­el ath­letes. "The re­sults don't lie." The lo­cal Olympic chief con­grat­u­lat­ed Ram­sara and Sam­ple and urged the sil­ver medal win­ners�and their team­mates to be in­spired and mo­ti­vat­ed to strive for con­tin­ued im­prove­ment.