After winning gold, Noè Ponti also achieved an exploit with the relay on the last day of the World Short Course Championships in Budapest. Despite setting a national record, the Swiss were denied a place in the final.
15.12.2024, 11:47
15.12.2024, 12:06
SDA
Led by another outstanding Ponti on the dolphin course, the men's 4x100 m medley relay team was only just short of qualifying for the medal competition on Sunday evening. The quartet of Thierry Bollin (backstroke), Louis Droupy (breaststroke), Roman Mityukov (crawl) and Ponti finished 10th out of 28 nations in the preliminary heats. In 3:24.74, they beat the six-year-old Swiss record by more than eight seconds, but were just under nine tenths off the top eight.
A few minutes earlier, Mityukov had also missed out on a place in the final in his third individual start at these championships. The Olympic bronze medal winner from Paris in the 200 m backstroke, who is much less comfortable in the small pool, finished 20th in the preliminary heats in 1:52.87.
Antonio Djakovic also failed to get up to speed in the Hungarian capital after an epidemic year of illness and injuries. As in the 400m crawl, the 2021 World Championship bronze medallist was also eliminated in the heats of the half-distance event. In 1:45.03, the man from Thurgau was over two and a half seconds off his Swiss record, which he set three years ago at the World Short Course Championships in Abu Dhabi.
