Nigel Si­mon

Four days af­ter cap­tur­ing a sec­ond bronze medal at a FI­NA World Cham­pi­onship in the men's 50m freestyle Long Course fi­nal, T&T's George Bovell III be­gan his Short Course World Cup with gold medal in the 100m in­di­vid­ual med­ley in a new na­tion­al record yes­ter­day.

This was on the first day of the two-day meet at the Pieter van den Hoogen­band Swim­ming Sta­di­um in Eind­hoven, Hol­land.

The 30-year-old Bovell, swim­ming out of lane sev­en, was third at the half-way mark of the race with a split of 23.62 sec­onds af­ter a slow re­ac­tion time of .69 sec­onds, but im­proved dras­ti­cal­ly over the fi­nal 50m to take gold in 51.15 sec­onds for 974 FI­NA points, the third best on the day, which bet­ter his 51.20 clock­ing set in win­ning gold on Oc­to­ber 20 last year in Berlin, Ger­many.

Sec­ond was his World Cup ri­val, Aus­tralian Ken­neth To in 51.31 who had led at the half. Russ­ian Vladimir Mo­ro­zov, who had the fastest re­ac­tion time, got bronze in 51.50.

The oth­er fin­ish­ers were Aus­tralian Daniel Tran­ter (52.09), Ger­many's Markus Deibler (52.56), Hol­land's Mike Maris­sen (52.97), South African Dar­i­an Townsend (53.17) and Japan's Ko­suke Ki­ta­ji­ma in 53.20.

In the morn­ing ses­sion, the Michi­gan-based Bovell, swim­ming out of lane four in the third and fi­nal heat was joint-sec­ond with Townsend in 53.29.

Yet again, the T&T swim­mer had a split of 24.62 and an­oth­er slow re­ac­tion time of 0.72 for the sixth fastest qual­i­fy­ing time over­all to Townsend's 24.11 split.

The win­ner of the heat was Tran­ter (52.93), who was just 0.01 hun­dredths of a sec­ond faster off the starters' block while Townsend was third in 5.

Fin­land's Ari-Pekka Liukko­nen was fourth in the heat in 56.31 fol­lowed Switzer­land's Don­ald Cameron (56.87), Span­ish duo, Ser­gio Ca­ballero (1:20.91 mins) and Aitor Grande (1:29.09 mins) while Ital­ian, Fabio Scoz­zoli did not start the event.

Last year Bovell re­bound­ed from a medal-less Lon­don 2012 Olympic Games � his fourth Olympics � with awe­some per­for­mances in the World Cup to claim 16 medals, sev­en gold and nine sil­ver for sec­ond over­all "Most Out­stand­ing Men's Swim­mer" be­hind USA's An­tho­ny Ervin.

To­day, Bovell who al­so has an Olympic bronze (Athens 2004) in the 200m IM be­hind Amer­i­cans Michael Phelps and Lochte will go af­ter an­oth­er gold when he lines up in the fourth of five men's 50m freestyle heats from lane four again.

Oth­ers in the heat are Hol­land quar­tet, Co­en De Brui­jn, Jasper Van Mier­lo, Tom Lom­mers and Ru­ud Van Bom­mel as well as France's Yan­nick Ag­nel, Cana­di­ans, Tom­my Goss­land and Chris Man­ning and Liukko­nen.

On Sat­ur­day, Bovell, swim­ming out of lane eight had the slow­est re­ac­tion time to the starter's pis­tol of .71 sec­onds, but re­cov­ered well enough to touched the wall in a new na­tion­al Long Course record of 21.51 sec­onds for third be­hind Brazil­ian Ce­sar Cielo and Mo­ro­zov (21.47).

At the com­ple­tion of to­day's event, he will trav­el to Berlin, Ger­many for the sec­ond World Cup leg on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day be­fore re­turn­ing home for a short stay.