Ajla Del Ponte still believes in herself and her strengths.
Image: Keystone
Ajla Del Ponte hopes to gradually emerge from the shadows.
Image: Keystone
Ajla Del Ponte has been following a normal training program for several weeks now.
Image: Keystone
Above all, the Ticino native wants to rediscover the joy of competition
Image: Keystone
Ajla Del Ponte reached the Olympic final in Tokyo in 2021.
Image: Keystone
Ajla Del Ponte still believes in herself and her strengths.
Image: Keystone
Ajla Del Ponte hopes to gradually emerge from the shadows.
Image: Keystone
Ajla Del Ponte has been following a normal training program for several weeks now.
Image: Keystone
Above all, the Ticino native wants to rediscover the joy of competition
Image: Keystone
Ajla Del Ponte reached the Olympic final in Tokyo in 2021.
Image: Keystone
Ajla Del Ponte wants to return to the Swiss national sprint relay team. The 28-year-old from Ticino, fifth in the 100 m at the 2021 Olympics, is looking ahead despite some difficult years.
22.11.2024, 04:01
22.11.2024, 06:50
SDA
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- Difficult return after injuries: Ajla Del Ponte is fighting for her comeback in the Swiss sprint relay team after repeated injuries and a fractured tibia.
- Mental and physical progress: The 28-year-old feels increasingly physically and mentally stable, but is still working on fears and her full performance.
- Determined outlook despite setbacks: Despite occasional thoughts of giving up, Ajla Del Ponte remains optimistic and believes in further success in competitive sport.
In a lengthy interview with the Keystone-SDA news agency, Ajla Del Ponte gives an insight into how she has been feeling over the past few months after she was injured again in May and missed the European Championships in Rome and the Olympic Games in Paris as a result.
"Physically I feel good, mentally too," says the athlete from Ticino. "Some things still need to come back, but I'm not far away from the others, sometimes I'm even ahead when I'm training with the other women."
So your right thigh is symptom-free? "There was a certain amount of anxiety before the start in the fall. I even have a trauma from October 18: I injured it twice that day," she says. "I don't want to say that I didn't train on October 18, but..." she smiles.
"I still sometimes feel a slight pain when I step on the gas. But that's mainly anxiety, and I'm working on that. You can see the scar very well on the ultrasound images, which is positive. And the strength and resistance test I do every week shows that my muscle is holding up better and better."
Desire to give up everything
The 28-year-old believes that a lot is still possible for her. After recurring problems in her right thigh and an operation for a triple tibia fracture in November 2022, she makes no secret of the fact that she has sometimes wanted to give it all up.
"I often thought about it and asked myself why it all happened to me, what could go wrong. I told Laurent (Meuwly, her Swiss coach at the Dutch base in Apeldoorn - editor's note) twice that I was going to quit." The last time she did this was last May after the meeting in Basel, where she injured herself again.
"Top-class sport is grueling, even if you don't say it often. But above all it is mentally grueling," continues the Ticino native. Del Ponte does not hide the fact that she has suffered from depressive episodes. "You tend to hide these things. I even tend not to accept them..."
Coping with grief at the Olympic final
She coped with her grief in a special way. She watched the women's 100m Olympic final with her parents in the stadium in Paris. "I closed my eyes during the final. That was my way of leaving it all behind. I have to admit that it hurts my heart sometimes. The fact that I couldn't be there will always be a disappointment. It was a painful phase. But I had to accept that it wasn't my time," emphasizes the second-fastest Swiss woman over 100 m with 10.90 seconds.
Her thoughts are now focused on the future, but the sprinter does not want to set herself goals too quickly. "At the moment, I'm letting things come to me. But we are athletes, we work with goals. It would be great to wear the Swiss national team jersey again, but the competition in sprinting is fierce," Ajla Del Ponte points out.
"I have to take things one step at a time. The first goal is to be able to complete a full indoor season," an indoor season that she will tackle in just over a month after the traditional training camp in South Africa. "But time doesn't count at the moment. Above all, I want to have fun competing again."
