Nigel Si­mon

Un­beat­en so far this year in com­pe­ti­tion, T&T Olympic and World Cham­pi­onship bronze medal swim­mer George Bovell III touched down in Barcelona, Spain, yes­ter­day, ahead of the 15th FI­NA World Long Course Swim­ming Cham­pi­onship with ex­pec­ta­tions of some quick times.

He will start com­pet­ing on Au­gust 2, in the pre­lim­i­nary heats with the semi­fi­nals and fi­nal card­ed for a day lat­er at the Palau Sant Jor­di Swim­ming and Syn­chro­nized Are­na which has a seat­ing ca­pac­i­ty of 12,000 spec­ta­tors.

The oth­er mem­bers of the T&T con­tin­gent, Joshua and Abra­ham, along with coach Joseph Mc Leod, their fa­ther and team man­ag­er, George Bovell III's fa­ther, George Bovell II ar­rived in Barcelona ear­li­er in the week.

Com­ment­ing on his fi­nal set or prepa­ra­tions at his Michi­gan Wolver­ines camp, Bovell said, "The past few weeks have been wind­ing down or as we say in swim­ming ta­per­ing with the in­ten­tion of peak­ing at the world champs.

"I have adapt­ed my train­ing style and in­cor­po­rat­ed some new things in my train­ing and am ex­cit­ed to see how they pay off. I hope to im­prove on my per­for­mances in Lon­don, and I be­lieve that if I can get down in­to the vicin­i­ty of a 21.55 sec­onds tim­ing from the 21.77 I went in Lon­don it will sure­ly get on top that podi­um.

"The com­pe­ti­tion as al­ways is go­ing to be very fast and I know the races will be very close, so there won't be any room to play around in the heats or se­mi-fi­nals. Bovell who was fifth in the 50m freestyle fi­nals 10 years at the same Barcelona Pool and sev­enth in Shang­hai, Chi­na, two years ago said in 22.04 said he is ready to chal­lenge the World's top sprint­ers.

How­ev­er, the T&T bronze medal­list in the World Short Course Cham­pi­onship last De­cem­ber said he was mind­ful of the medal threats posed by USA's An­tho­ny Ervin, his newest ri­val and 2001 win­ner as well as an­oth­er Amer­i­can in Nathan Adri­an, James Mag­nussen from Aus­traili, Vladimir Mor­ri­zov from Rus­sia and Flo­rent Man­adou and Fred Bous­quet from France as well as 2005 cham­pi­on Roland Schoe­man of South Africa.

Fol­low­ing the Cham­pi­onship, Bovell will turn his at­ten­tion to the FI­NA World Cup in which he was sec­ond over­all last year to Ervin.