T&T's Olympic bronze medal swim­mer and two-time World Cham­pi­onship bronze medal­ist, George Bovell III says he rates his just con­clud­ed sea­son as be­ing a more suc­cess­ful sea­son than last year.To back up his state­ment, the 30-year-old said it was ev­i­dent my his 21.51 sec­onds swim to win the World Cham­pi­onship FI­NA Long Course bronze medal in the men's 50 me­tre freestyle in Barcelona, Spain in Au­gust ver­sus the 21.77 it took to make the 2012 Lon­don Olympic fi­nal in which he placed sev­enth.Bovell, who took bronze in the 200m in­di­vid­ual med­ley at the 2000 Athens Greece, Olympics, al­so won a bronze at last year's FI­NA World Short Course Cham­pi­onship in the 100m IM in 56.66 in Is­tan­bul, Turkey, for T&T's first ever swim­ming medal at a FI­NA Cham­pi­onship.A four-time Olympian, Bovell al­so com­pet­ed in all eight stops of the FI­NA World Cup Short Course cir­cuit and end­ed with 13 medals (one gold, five sil­ver, sev­en bronze) this sea­son as com­pared to his 16 medals (nine gold and sev­en sil­ver) won last year.

Re­flect­ing on his sea­son, Bovell, a nine-time World Cham­pi­onship fi­nal­ist said, "I am very grate­ful for the ho­n­our and thrill of rep­re­sent­ing our coun­try at this top lev­el of swim­ming."This 2013 FI­NA World Cup chal­lenge has been a price­less learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence that found me in a dif­fer­ent phase of my macro prepa­ra­tion." He said, "I had re­turned to an en­durance phase af­ter the World Cham­pi­onships for Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber and was build­ing a sol­id base for the next sea­son, hence I was fit­ter on this tour, fin­ish­ing races faster but lack­ing my peaked ex­plo­sive­ness and strength."With re­gards to his times which are just a bit slow­er than last sea­son, Bovell, a five-time NCAA in­di­vid­ual cham­pi­on said, "I now re­alise just how im­por­tant that ex­plo­sive­ness and strength is to my 50m swim which is why I be­lieve I was not able to match my stel­lar times from last year in that race, while still pro­duc­ing very fast 100m IM's. To me, it is very sat­is­fy­ing with the way I was able to con­sis­tent­ly get on the podi­um and to con­tin­u­al­ly im­prove on my per­for­mances, get­ting faster each time by fine tun­ing my strat­e­gy and cor­rect­ing my mis­takes.

For these im­prove­ments, the top T&T swim­mer, who end­ed his NCAA swim­ming ca­reer un­de­feat­ed said he would like to thank his coach, Min­is­ter of Sports Anil Roberts for his feed­back that was in­stru­men­tal in this process.Com­ment­ing on the com­pe­ti­tion he faced this year dur­ing the World Cup, the 25-time All-Amer­i­can ho­n­our roll stu­dent, the most in Auburn Uni­ver­si­ty his­to­ry, point­ed out Olympic gold medal­ist and world record hold­er Roland Schoe­man of South Africa and Russ­ian Vladimir Mo­ro­zov as the top two chal­lengers."Mo­ro­zov al­so demon­strat­ed that he is a strong force to con­tend with by cop­ping mul­ti­ple medals at the Fi­na World Long and Short Course Cham­pi­onships in Is­tan­bul and Barcelona brought new twists to the fa­mil­iar ri­val­ries I had from last year with USA's An­tho­ny Ervin and Aus­tralian Ken­neth To."Mo­ro­zov, my­self and to fin­ished the year ranked first, sec­ond and third, re­spec­tive­ly, in the 100m IM."

How­ev­er, while Bovell en­joyed an­oth­er stel­lar sea­son on the World Cup cir­cuit af­ter his World Cham­pi­onship bronze swim he not­ed that his time back home may have cost him a bit in terms of his sharp­ness.He said, "I be­came painful­ly aware that dur­ing my time train­ing in T&T alone af­ter the sum­mer World Cham­pi­onships a few of my de­tails such as my turns and dives be­came rusty as I was un­able to prac­tice them prop­er­ly at home due to our poor fa­cil­i­ties, it was an ex­tra chal­lenge to try and re­vamp and fine tune these things one race at a time."Un­der­tak­ing a chal­lenge like the World Cup alone where I am a one-man team of ath­lete, coach, phys­io­ther­a­pist and man­ag­er is some­thing so much more than just swim­ming that I don't think many peo­ple ap­pre­ci­ate and per­haps puts me at a dis­ad­van­tage to some of the oth­er ful­ly sup­port­ed teams. It en­tails deal­ing with in­juries and re­cov­ery, ac­quir­ing visas, man­ag­ing lo­gis­tics, in ad­di­tion to the am­ple swim­ming chal­lenges.

"I suf­fered a strain in my neck and up­per shoul­der area in the first com­pe­ti­tion in Moscow and as I was not able to get treat­ment it be­came some­thing that I had to deal with for the rest of the tour.De­spite the set­back, Bovell still laud­ed the ef­forts of his friends and com­peti­tors, who have helped him on the tour, pro­vid­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion and help­ing to ob­tain­ing visas and all those, who have pro­vid­ed sup­port and en­er­gy from here in T&T.To­day, Bovell will be avail­able from 10am–2pm for a jun­ket with sports me­dia, giv­ing one-on-one in­ter­views about his sea­son and jour­ney to Rio 2016.This su­perla­tive ath­lete will al­so share his thoughts as a na­tion­al ath­lete train­ing abroad, about his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to give back to younger swim­mers and the im­por­tance of de­vel­op­ing coach­ing tal­ent in T&T while Min­is­ter Roberts, will al­so be on hand for sup­ple­men­tary in­ter­views on sport-re­lat­ed mat­ters.