Rachael Thomp­son-King

T&T's George Bovell sev­enth place fin­ish in the Men's 50 me­tres freestyle fi­nal has him se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing re­tire­ment. "I'm tak­ing it one year at a time. I plan to swim for an­oth­er year and from there I think I will re­tire at the World Cham­pi­onships in Barcelona," said Bovell af­ter he ex­it­ed the pool at the Aquat­ic Cen­tre at the Olympic Games in Lon­don, Eng­land. Bovell touched the wall in 21.82 sec­onds at the Aquat­ic Cen­tre, un­able to bet­ter or match his pre­vi­ous time of 21.77 which he record­ed in the both the heats and semi­fi­nals in his fourth ap­pear­ance at the biggest sport­ing event in the world. "Hon­est­ly, sport is re­al­ly a plat­form to learn vi­tal life lessons and lets face the facts, fail­ure is a big part of life. It's about learn­ing how to ad­dress it, how to live and move on," said Bovell. Tak­ing gold was French­man Flo­rent Man­au­dou in a time of 21.34 while USA's Cullen Jones (21.54) and world record hold­er Ce­sar Cielo (21.59) of Brazil, copped sil­ver and bronze, re­spec­tive­ly.

Bovell is rat­ed as the most suc­cess­ful swim­mer in the Caribbean. In the 2004 Athens Olympics, he won a bronze medal in the 200 in­di­vid­ual med­ley . The lo­cal swim­mer was a semi­fi­nal­ist at Bei­jing in 2008 and fin­ished sev­enth at the 2009 and 2011 World Cham­pi­onships in Shang­hai. When asked about a pos­si­bil­i­ty of him com­pet­ing at the next Olympic Games in Brazil in 2016, he plain­ly stat­ed: "Rio is far away, not yet." Over at the Olympic Sta­di­um, T&T women sprint­ers Kel­ly-Ann Bap­tiste, Se­moy Hack­ett and Michelle Lee Ahye ad­vanced to the semi­fi­nal round of the 100m event. Bap­tiste as the fastest among the trio with time of 10.96 to top heat one and move on with fourth fastest time of 10.96. Hack­ett crossed the line in a per­son­al best time in 11.04 and Ahye ran 11.28. The best one the night was Amer­i­can Carmeli­ta Jeter in 10.83. Niger­ian Bless­ing Ok­ag­bare (10.93) and Veron­i­ca Camp­bell-Brown (10.94) were the oth­er run­ners ahead of Bap­tiste. Ear­li­er in track and field at the Olympic Sta­di­um, T&T ath­letes had mixed re­sults with hur­dler Je­hue Gor­don ad­vanc­ing to the next round and Ayan­na Alexan­der just miss­ing out on pro­gress­ing to the next round in the women's triple jump event.

Gor­don was left al­most speech­less af­ter qual­i­fy­ing for to­day's semi­fi­nals of the Men's 400m hur­dles on his de­but at the Games. "I re­al­ly don't know what to say. At my first Olympics, I just want­ed to come out here and have some fun. I know a lot of peo­ple ex­pect so much from me," said Gor­don, who was be­ing sup­port­ed by his fam­i­ly in­clud­ing his moth­er. Run­ning in lane nine, he crossed the line in 49.37 to fin­ish sec­ond in heat five be­hind Amer­i­can An­ge­lo Tay­lor (49.29). "I fo­cussed on my lane and I ex­e­cut­ed," said a proud Gor­don, who was al­ready think­ing about what he needs to do to go faster in the next round. "My steps were messed up on two hur­dles. Once I get it and use the bend a lit­tle hard­er, my time should drop." Puer­to Ri­can Javier Cul­son had the best qual­i­fy­ing time of 48.33. Ker­ron Clement of the USA was next in 48.48 and Omar Cis­neros third with 48.63. They all com­pet­ed in heat four. Mean­while, over on the oth­er side of the sta­di­um, Alexan­der had a best at­tempt of 14.09 to place 14th. It was the third and fi­nal try but she just fell short of mak­ing the top 12. "I had an amaz­ing sea­son, break­ing the na­tion­al record sev­er­al times and jump­ing over 14 me­tres sev­er­al times," said Alexan­der. "It was my first Olympic Games and is a his­tor­i­cal mo­ment be­cause it's the first time T&T had a woman in the triple-jump at the Games." At the end of day four of sail­ing, T&T's An­drew Lewis is in 45th place af­ter plac­ing 35th and 46th in races sev­en and eight, re­spec­tive­ly in the Men's laser event at Wey­mouth and Port­land in Dorset. Lewis re­mains out of the top ten which will progress to the medal. He will re­turn to­day look­ing to end on a high note in the fi­nal two races of the se­ries.

YES­TER­DAY'S MEDAL­LISTS

ARCHERY

Men's In­di­vid­ual: (1) JH OH (Kor) (2) T Fu­rukawa (JPN) (3) X Dai (CHN)

ATH­LET­ICS

Women's 10,000m: (1) T Diba­ba (ETH) (2) S Kipyego (KEN) (3) V Cheruiy­ot (KEN)

Men's Shot Put: (1) T Ma­jew­s­ki (POL) (2) D Storl (GER) (3) R Hof­fa (USA)

BAD­MINTON

Mixed Dou­bles: (1) Chi­na (2) Chi­na (3) Den­mark

CY­CLING- TRACK

Women's Keirin: (1) V Pendle­ton (GBR) (2) S Guo (CHN) (3) WS Lee (HKG)

Men's Team Pur­suit: (1) Great Britain (2) Aus­tralia (3) New Zealand

FENC­ING

Men's Team Sabre: (1) Ko­rea (2) Ro­ma­nia (3) Italy

JU­DO

Men's +100kg: (1) T Riner (FRA) (2) A Mikhaylin (RUS) (3) R Sil­va (BRA)/A Toelz­er (GER)

Women's +78kg: (1) I Or­tiz (CUB) (2) M Sug­i­mo­to (JPN) (3) K Bryant (GBR)/W Tong (CHN)

ROW­ING

Men's Sin­gle Sculls: (1) M Drys­dale (NZL) (2) O Synek (CZE) (3) A Camp­bell (GBR)

Men's Quadru­ple Sculls: (1) Ger­many (2) Croa­t­ia (3) Aus­tralia

Men's Pair: (1) New Zealand (2) France (3) Great Britain

Women's Dou­ble Sculls: (1) Great Britain (2) Aus­tralia (3) Poland

SHOOT­ING

Men's 50m Ri­fle Prone: (1) S Mar­tynov (BLR) (2) L Cox (BEL) (3) R De­bevec (SLO)

Men's 25m Rapid Fire Pis­tol: (1) L Pupo (CUB) (2) V Ku­mar (IND) (3) F Ding (CHN)

SWIM­MING

Women's 200m Back­stroke: (1) M Franklin (USA) (2) A Zue­va (RUS) (3) E Beisel (USA)

Men's 100m But­ter­fly: (1) M Phelps (USA) (2) C Le Clos (RSA)/E Ko­rotyshkin (RUS)

Women's 800m Freestyle: (1) K Ledecky (USA) (2) G Bel­monte (ESP) (3) R Adling­ton (GBR)

Men's 50m Freestyle: (1) F Man­au­dou (FRA) (2) C Jones (USA) (3) C Cielo (BRA)

TRAM­PO­LINE

Men's Tram­po­line: (1) D Dong (CHN) (2) D Ushakov (RUS) (3) C Lu (CHN)

WEIGHTLIFT­ING

Women's 75kg: (1) S Podobedo­va (KAZ) (2) N Zabolot­naya (RUS) (3) I Kule­sha (BLR)

SPOT­LIGHT

French swim­mer FLO­RENT MAN­ADOU blew past de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Ce­sar Cielo (Brazil) to win the men's 50m freestyle fi­nal yes­ter­day in 21.34s.

QUOTE OF?THE DAY

"Every­body is def­i­nite­ly go­ing to be run­ning their hearts out to­mor­row (to­day)."

Reign­ing women's 100m World cham­pi­on CARMELI­TA?JETER knows com­pe­ti­tion will be stiff in the event semi­fi­nals this af­ter­noon.

QUIRK OF THE?DAY

Dis­graced Chi­nese bad­minton star, Yu Yang, quit the sport on Thurs­day af­ter be­ing kicked out of the Games and sent home. Chi­nese news­pa­pers, in­clud­ing the Shang­hai Morn­ing Post, re­port­ed that Yu had re­tired from com­pe­ti­tion in the wake of the scan­dal that saw her and sev­en oth­er ath­letes dis­qual­i­fied for at­tempt­ing to lose the women's dou­bles group match­es. Yu was claimed to have post­ed a mes­sage on the Ten­cent mi­croblog­ging ser­vice that in­di­cat­ed she would no longer rep­re­sent her na­tion­al team or take part in the in­ter­na­tion­al pro­fes­sion­al tour.