George inspired by swimmer Bovell

Bovell has subsequently hinted heavily at retirement as he feels disenchanted due to alleged doping issues plaguing his sport.

George offered support and backed the swimmer as a mentor and one who was crucial in his transition into judo. George was ousted by Myanmar’s Yan Naing Soe in the Men’s 100kg contest.

The former Queen’s Royal College student said, “I spoke to him (Bovell) a few years ago and I remember him telling me, ‘Chris, you have to focus. You have to narrow it down and focus on one thing’.” George added that as an engineer who also has academic qualifications in law, Bovell always extended indispensable advice which led to him streamlining his sporting ambition.

George became a national swimmer in 1994 and on this exploit he said, “I remember in ‘94 when I made my first national team and went to Jamaica for the Caribbean Islands Swimming Championships and ever since then I’ve always had this (dream to) want to go to the Olympics.” The local judo champion said his strength was “distance swimming like the 1500m freestyle”. He morphed into the national water polo skipper from 2008 to 2011 before retiring from it a year later. “When I transitioned to water polo, that was my dream too — taking a team sport to the Olympics. Unfortunately we got to the qualifiers, the Pan American games, but things didn’t pan out.

After that, everything happens for a purpose,” continued George, revealing he began martial arts to supplement his strength in water polo.

“I’ve always had a passion for sports and that was something that really stuck with me all the way through my athletic journey.

You speak about swimming to water polo to a sport that was absolutely not related to the water at all. I’d been practising another martial art — shotokan, karate — and I wanted to try my hand at something (else). Judo came and a lot of people don’t see the analogy between judo and water polo but I see water polo as wrestling in the water.

There was a nice balance there and I felt I was comfortable wrestling people,” as he touched on his time in the Torokan gym with sensei, Adam Chin Leung.

He also thanked his parents and brother Matthew who always competed with him in water polo and swimming, even when they studied abroad in USA.

He eventually trained with Mark Litrean and became a national champion in 2012 before heading to Scotland to join the Aberdeen Judo Club in 2013. He participated in the 2013 Commonwealth Games, grabbed TT ’s first judo medal with a bronze in the 2014 CAC Games prior to booking an Olympic spot in the last Pan Am Championships in Cuba. “This experience is a dream come true. A lifelong dream,” he declared.