Bovell claims first swimming medal
Olympic Medal Men - an 8-part series
By
Dr Basil Ince
OLYMPIAN,
written by Dr Basil Ince, was published in 2011. The book examines, in
detail, the history of Trinidad and Tobago’s Olympic participation.
Included in OLYMPIAN are profiles of the country’s eight individual
Olympic medallists, between 1948 and 2008. Between July 17 and August 9,
excerpts from those eight profiles are being featured in the pages of
the Trinidad Express. The profiles, in their entirety, are being
published on the Express website (http://www.trinidadexpress.com/olympics).
Today, we feature swimmer George Bovell. He captured bronze in 2004, in Athens, Greece.
Here
he was at the start of the 200m Intermediate Medley (IM) final, all
6’5” of him, before the crouch of course, along with the seven other
finalists, all carrying with them, on their finely tuned bodies, their
hopes and aspirations, and at the same time the hopes and aspirations
of their coaches and their nations. The ritual of the early morning
workouts, and the afternoon workouts had all come down to this. George
had already been quoted as saying “I am excited at the prospect of
swimming against the best in the world at the Olympics.” He tried to
block it all out. He had already done all that was required of him, and
now found himself in lane 2, trying to focus on the task at hand. He had
gone this route already in the preliminaries and in the semi-final.
Yes,
the day before at the Olympic Aquatic Center in Athens, Greece, the
birth place of the Olympics, George had started his trek to the final.
Drawn in lane 4 in the fifth heat, George came home third in 1:59.46.
Already he had gone farther than any other national at the Olympic
Games. All that earned him was an opportunity to return in the evening
at 20:44 to race again in the semi-final. The pressure was off a little.
He knew what he could do.
Drawn
in lane 5, he finished in 2:00.65, ahead of him the Hungarian, Lazlo
Csech in 1:59.50. All was going to plan. Exactly six minutes before his
semi-final, two serious contenders had already qualified for the final.
Michael Phelps, the hot favourite had won in a relaxed 2:00.01, while
the other American, Ryan Lochte, had coasted home in 2:01.41. Everyone
was holding back for the big one. And so, the battle lines were drawn
for the next day.
That’s how
George found himself in lane 2, poised to win the nation’s first Olympic
medal in swimming, and the nation’s sole medal at the Games. The race
was off. Phelps grabbed the lead from the start and never relinquished
it in a wire to wire win. At the end of the first 50m Lochte was back in
fifth, George in sixth. At the end of the second 50m, the backstroke,
George maintained his position. Generally, George has a pretty good idea
where he is in a race. As he put it, “I checked my rearview mirror.”
What his rearview mirror showed was that he was still in sixth position.
Half of the race was over and it was time to make a move.
Checking
the rearview mirror isn’t the only thing on George’s mind during the
race. All in a flash, he considers if he is doing his stroke properly,
how hard he is pushing himself, and how he judges the distance from the
wall so that he can execute his turns smoothly. At the same time, he is
checking out the opposition. W ho’s out fast, and from his experience,
who’s a fast finisher. In other words, George has a panoramic view of
the race.
At the start of
the third leg, the breaststroke, Lochte’s and George’s positions remain
unchanged. It was on the third 50m that George made his move, swimming
powerfully into second position. He traversed the third phase of the
race in 33.95 seconds to move him into second spot behind the flying
Phelps. Lochte remained fifth, but not for long. At this point, George
seemed to have a lock on the silver. That was until Lochte made his move
slicing through the last 50m, the freestyle, in 28.19 to George’s
28.64.
George and Ryan Lochte were no strangers. They had swum competitively
on several occasions, and George had had the better of him. Not today in
the Olympic final when it counted most. Lochte’s surge carried him from
fifth to second, just enough to grab silver from George by two
hundredths of a second.
George
was on cloud nine. “That was sweet,” he exulted. “I’ve been in a couple
of world championship finals, finishing in fourth or fifth. So I’m just
ecstatic about finally finishing in the top three, especially at the
Olympic Games. It’s just surreal; a dream come true. It’s bittersweet
though having been so close to second.” His Trinbago coach, Anil Roberts
explained: “His freestyle hasn’t been that great at this meet because
of the shoulder blade. We didn’t work the freestyle too much, so I was
just a little worried about George getting home.” Anil’s reference was
to George’s shoulder injury a few days before. George’s parents and
coaches were ecstatic. They felt that their sacrifices for their son had
been justified. Trinidad and Tobago was agog with its first medal of
the Games and its first ever in swimming. In years to come, other
nationals may win Olympic medals in swimming, but George Bovell III will
always be the first.
The
road to the rostrum started way back in Malabar, just two miles from
Arima where, as a youngster, George’s mother introduced him to his
grandmother’s swimming pool. There is the notion that because these
Caribbean islands are surrounded by water, that island people all know
how to swim. Not true. Access is important, and the pool is perhaps the
safest place in which to learn. In that respect, George was fortunate.
George’s parents supported his swimming career which he began
competitively at age seven.
George
was born in Guelph, Ontario in July 1983, where his father George II
had been studying at McGill University. Growing up, young George
attended St Andrews, Fatima, and Maple Leaf schools. He completed his
secondary education abroad at the Bolles School of Swimming in
Jacksonville, Florida where he spent 21/2 years. In the pattern of
sports-minded youngsters, George tried the popular games before
venturing abroad: football and cricket. He discovered that he was “
better at bowling than batting.” He also dabbled in a little gymnastics,
but swimming remained a constant in his life. In short order, he joined
Marlins Swim Club, Flying Fish, and eventually Piranha Aquatics.
George
has never forgotten his first competitive race in which he finished
eighth out of eight competitors. This did not deter him, but proved to
be a challenge. He kept plugging away, stuck to it and his tenacity paid
off. By fourteen he was breaking national records and by sixteen
Caribbean records began to fall. George never shunned the required work
to build his stamina. On one occasion, he swam in all thirteen events,
heats and finals, testifying to his versatility in all strokes today. It
was when he began to win at the Caribbean National Swimming
Championships (ICISC) that his handlers, Hayden Newallo and Ed Tubaroso
realised that they had someone special on their hands. Both were helping
him with his technique and skills. The ten to eleven sessions per week
yielded results.
Bovell won
so often at the Championships—five or six races—that he stopped
competing there. Compared to the times and rankings of world-class
swimmers, George’s times were such that were he to continue on this
trajectory, he would become a world-class competitor. His parents felt
that in order to maximise his talent, he should attend a swimming
school. That’s how Bolles came into the picture. It was at Bolles that
George honed his skills. He became a Florida State High School champion
in the 100m backstroke and the 200 IM. The next stop was college.
George
visited several of them which were eager to recruit him. Among them
were swimming powerhouses such as the University of Florida, Tennessee,
Southern California, and Stanford. George finally chose Auburn
University because he “really liked the team, the coaches, the
facilities, and the programme was great.” Auburn’s head coach, David
March, knew that he had scored a recruiting coup when he heard George’s
decision. “George is probably the highest level signee we have ever had
at Auburn. He comes to us already world-ranked in the backstrokes and
freestyle as well.”
When
George went to Auburn, a university located in a college town about an
hour and twenty minutes from Atlanta, he already had the benefit of
competing in big time meets. He had competed at the World Swimming
Championships in Fukuoka, Japan and had gone to the Olympics in
Australia. George’s hopes for a medal in Sydney were not high. After
finishing 26th in the 200m 1M, he was realistic when he foretold, “I
think I’ll have a good chance of winning a medal at the next Olympics.”
Yet still at Bolles, he knew that maturity and training with swift
teammates at Auburn would serve him in good stead.
At
Bolles, George had been on a regimen that prepared him for the work at
Auburn. His day began at 5.30a.m. Two hours of practice followed before
breakfast. Classes lasted from 8.30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and half hour after
the end of classes, his second session started. He would have a 2¾ hours
workout before dinner and study time. Incidentally, he’d find half an
hour to run on the track and train with the medicine ball. His day at
Auburn was not much different. He began at 5.20 a.m. After drinking a
milk shake, he would head to the pool and swim for a couple of hours. At
8.30 he had breakfast and got ready for his classes which eventually
led to a degree in building science.
On
Monday, Wednesday and Friday between 2 and 3 p.m., George would hit the
gym to work out with light weights. At the end of that workout, he’d
head to the pool a second time for the day. From 3 to about 5.30 p.m. he
swam about 15 kilometres consisting of a warmup set, repetitions of ten
400m IM, a couple 800m free style, and would top it off with some 50m
sprints. Workout completed, he’d head home to prepare dinner before
beginning his homework assignments. This would end around 10.30. Then
George would begin again the following day. Outside of the pool the
routine included parametrics, calisthenics, push-ups, running on the
track, up the stairs and long aerobic training. The truth is that George
had only two weeks in the year when he was doing absolutely nothing
related to working out.
These
routines have been described in detail so that the reader can
understand what goes into the making of an Olympic-calibre swimmer in a
US college. In swimming, it is virtually all-year long training with
just a little time for a break. It is during the school year that the
challenge of time- management arises, namely, devoting time and energy
to studying, while at the same time training twice daily, and travelling
often to compete in meets. Not every student-athlete can perform this
balancing act successfully. George did this well. “I think I manage
studying and training well, but it can be overwhelming at times,” he
admits.
Let’s pick up
George’s story just before his departure from Bolles. In June 2003 he
won the 200m IM and the 200 yards long course freestyle at a regional
meet in North Carolina, then hopped across to Barcelona for the Tenth
FINA World Swimming Championships where he finished in fifth place in
his favourite event, the 200m IM. This was the tip-off that George had
cemented a spot as a world-class swimmer in that event by following up
his 4th place finish at those Championships in Japan the previous year. W
hen George went to the World Championships in Barcelona in July 2003
and the Pan American Games in Santo Domingo a month later, he had
already graduated from Bolles.
It
was his performances at these meets that supported Dave March’s glee in
George’s choice of Auburn. The performance at the Pan American Games
only served to solidify his status in big league swimming. Granted that
the leading Americans were not there— Phelps, Hansen, Hall, Peirsol—the
fact is that anyone the USA enters is good and the times recorded were
world class. George won two golds in the 200m IM and the 200m freestyle
and got silvers in the 100m freestyle and 100m backstroke. In one fell
swoop he raised the country’s aggregate in swimming medals at the Pan Am
Games to five, adding to Mark Andrews’ bronze way back in 1987.
Trinidad and Tobago had a genuine world class swimmer who made the crowd
become familiar with its national anthem. He joined distinguished
nationals such as Mike Agostini, Ed Roberts, and Roger Gibbons as
multi-medallist winners at the Pan Am Games.
George
was simply swim-happy in 2003 and ended the year at the Auburn Tigers
Invitational with six gold, a silver, and two bronzes. If his 2003
record was exceptional, he put it all together in Olympic year. A
series of wins at several meets helped him to build up for the Olympic
competition, but two stand out. The World Cup meet at Rio de Janeiro
where he won two golds in 100m IM and the 200m IM and NCAA Swimming
Championships in New York. It was here that he set the world record in
the short course 200m IM, clocking 1:53.93. There was no doubt that
George was going to be on the rostrum come Olympic time. All he needed
was to stay healthy.
Given
his performances in 2003, George was definitely on an upward trajectory
for the Games in Athens. All things equal, George would obviously be a
serious contender to improve on his Olympic bronze at the next Games in
Beijing. That was not to be the case. On his return to Auburn after
Athens, George suffered a serious injury to his knee which necessitated
surgery. This setback reduced the newly-minted bronze medallist to
being no more than a bit player on the Auburn team. In fact, the injury
was so serious that he was forced to give up his favourite event, the
200m IM, because his backstroke was affected. Henceforth, he
concentrated on his next best events, the free style sprints. This was
not an easy transition for the talented swimmer from Malabar but, for
the strides he made in the circumstances, George can be described as a
profile in courage. In his virtual comeback, he won gold at the CAC
Games in the 50m freestyle in 2006, and a bronze in that same event at
the Pan Am Games in 2007. One year later at the Olympics in Beijing, he
broke the Olympic record in the heats and finished in eleventh spot.
George
continued his Sisyphean climb for the Games in London and in 2009 broke
the world record in the 50m freestyle. More recently, he finished just
outside the medals in the 100m IM at the World Championships at Dubai in
2010. Through sheer grit the Auburn alumnus has steadily climbed back
into world class contention in events that were previously not at the
top of his priority. To effect this comeback, he went with freestyle
coach Mike Bottomley to Berkeley, California, and later followed
Bottomley to Florida Keys. More recently he has switched his training to
his former coach, Anil Roberts, the current Minister of Sport. It is
this combination which Trinbagonians hope will place George on the
Olympic rostrum for a second time. George finds it difficult to stay
away from water and for relaxation he enjoys spearfishing and tends to
his aquarium. He also enjoys cycling. These hobbies serve to break the
exacting regimen of training which brought him an Olympic bronze, five
Pan American Games medals, five NCAA Championships, and the Sportsman of
the Year Award for 2004. Regardless of the outcome in 2012, George will
always be the nation’s first Olympic swimming medallist.
On Thursday (July 26), we feature Edwin Roberts.
