Nicholas Clarke

Top T&T swim­mer George Bovell has set his sights on medalling at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, which he be­lieves will be pos­si­ble once he re­ceives the prop­er back­ing. Bovell made the com­ments dur­ing a wel­come cer­e­mo­ny held in his ho­n­our at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day evening.The 30-year-old re­cent­ly won a bronze medal in the 50m freestyle at the re­cent FI­NA World Cham­pi­onships in Barcelona in a na­tion­al record time of 21.51 as well as one gold (100m IM) and two bronze (50m Free, 100m IM) medals at FI­NA World Cup Se­ries events in Hol­land and Ger­many.

Ad­dress­ing the me­dia along­side his coach and Min­is­ter of Sport Anil Roberts, he said his achieve­ments in Eu­rope were an in­di­ca­tion that he was still at the top of his game."In our sport there are some peo­ple who you might think are un­beat­able. Maybe it's things they're do­ing. Maybe it's tech­nol­o­gy on their side. Maybe it's ne­far­i­ous means, but this medal here is proof that one man from T&T can beat those peo­ple," he said. "Any­thing can hap­pen if you pre­pare and go out there and give your best ef­fort. I be­lieve that this can be just a taste of what we can get in Rio if we do it right. I hope the peo­ple of T&T can come around and sup­port me; five Olympics and an­oth­er medal. Let's go!"

Bovell al­so ex­pressed his grat­i­tude to­wards his cor­po­rate spon­sors At­lantic LNG and NP as well as the peo­ple of T&T for their con­tin­ued sup­port of his swim­ming ca­reer."In sports like swim­ming you don't make a lot of mon­ey and to rep­re­sent the coun­try at this high lev­el, it is im­pos­si­ble for me to work a reg­u­lar job when the peo­ple I'm try­ing to beat are train­ing, ful­ly fund­ed and pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes. Their con­tin­ued sup­port helps me to bring these medals back to my coun­try."Mean­while, Roberts cit­ed Bovell's in­de­pen­dence as the rea­son for his suc­cess."George Bovell has lit­tle to no need for me as a coach. He is a bet­ter coach than all of us put to­geth­er be­cause he is a bril­liant mind and a stu­dent of the game. He un­der­stands him­self and his sport bet­ter than any­one on this plan­et. He has been do­ing it for him­self, think­ing by him­self. For him to win this medal from lane eight was all about the bril­liance and the in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty and the spirt and un­der­stand­ing of the com­pet­i­tive na­ture of George Bovell III."