Blink.
No, I haven't replaced a certain entertainment superstar as brand ambassador for a particular telecommunications network. But assuming you were inclined to follow the instruction of that first word, it is worth appreciating that the very brief instant of time it took for you to open and close your eyes just once is actually longer than the gap between George Bovell and the winner of the men's 50-metre freestyle at the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Florent Manaudou was first to the wall then in 21.34 seconds with Bovell seventh in 21.82, just 48 hundredths of a second adrift.
Okay, so you want me to say he was second-to-last? Yes, he was second-to-last. And while we're at it: yes, the four-time Olympian lost to a relative just-come 21-year-old; yes, the 29-year-old Trinidadian finished two spots behind a competitor (American Anthony Ervin) two years older than him and who had retired from competitive swimming in 2003 only to return to action in 2011; yes, it sounded like he was just making excuses when he talked about holding his breath and the starter's delay; and (this one is for the Balisier Brigade) yes, if he wasn't being coached by big-mouth Anil Roberts who should have been in Port of Spain attending to his responsibilities as Sports Minister, he would have won gold for sure.
Okay, so with all of that out of the way, let's now properly reflect on the sporting contribution made this year by the third in the line of George Bovells. Were it not for the stunning, out-of-the-blue, entirely unexpected triumph of Keshorn Walcott in the men's javelin at the London Games, it would have been the white boy from the posh north-west peninsula and not the black boy from the north-eastern backwater at the head of the class among our outstanding sporting achievers this year.
We are a society so full of ourselves that anything less than the top spot is considered failure, as if we were ever familiar with success at the highest level as we pretend to be. So while there was nothing terribly wrong with TV6 reporter Vinod Narwani's question (except maybe the timing, mere seconds after the event) to the country's top swimmer, asking "What went wrong?" it represented an accurate reflection of the mood of the nation in the aftermath of the event.
Even in this era of instant everything, it still takes time to properly appreciate certain things, like the toll on his mind and body after a vehicular accident on the way to Mayaro in August of last year. Know-nothings like so many of us will say that the Olympics were almost a year away at that time, as if the physical and emotional trauma of such a narrow escape doesn't impact on training and preparation for weeks and months; as if you just turn up on the starting blocks on August 3, 2012 and go for gold.
Hopefully in time to come, a generation will emerge who can truly appreciate what it means to be up there with the very best in the world in a (for us) not-so-popular pastime for more than a decade.
Our footballers scrape through as the 32nd and final team for the 2006 World Cup in Germany and the nation goes wild, even wilder than usual. They don't score a goal in three games when they get there but that doesn't matter. They made it on the big stage, they deserve all that could be given to them, and because of the depths to which our game has plummeted since, we will treasure that experience more and more as the years go by.
Yet Bovell has been on the big stage for more than ten years, was forced to change from his favourite event—the 200-metre individual medley in which he claimed Olympic bronze in Athens in 2004 —because of injury yet remains at the very elite level of world-class competition in the 50-metre freestyle.
Test and first-class batting world record-holder Brian Lara never really took to T20 cricket when it emerged on the international scene six years ago.
He was an abject failure in his only season in the breakaway Indian Cricket League in 2007 and no-one in the officially sanctioned, money-spinning Indian Premier League wanted his services when he went on the auction block last year.
On the other hand, the swimmer has made a successful transition from the supreme test of versatility to the raw, explosive power of the sport's shortest and swiftest test. For that reason alone he is a champion. But we take no notice of these things because swimming is a fringe sport beyond the narrow confines of a mentality that also perceives it as a pastime of the privileged who don't need recognition because they have everything else anyway.
So his bronze medal in the 100-metre IM two weeks ago at the Short-Course World Championships in Istanbul, like his 16 medals (seven gold, nine silver) over the previous two months on the World Cup circuit, like his gold and silver at the season-ending Vladimir Salnikov Cup in St Petersburg over the past two days grab the headlines but don't seep into the national consciousness.
Unlike Salnikov, the long-distance king who led a Russian revolution in the pool in the late 1970's, Bovell has carried our flag with dignity, honour and no little success virtually all on his own in his chosen discipline.
We don't know it yet, but he is a class apart.
By Fazeer Mohammed
Source: www.trinidadexpress.com