Noè Ponti is stringing together victory after victory at the World Cup venues in Shanghai, Incheon and Singapore. Highlights include two short course world records over 50 m dolphin and a European record over the double distance.
08.11.2024, 04:31
08.11.2024, 08:09
SDA
The day after his return from Asia, Ponti moves straight into the athletes' training program. In an interview with the Keystone-SDA news agency in Magglingen, he looks back on his successful time in Asia and talks about the "crazy" feeling of being the holder of a world record. The 23-year-old from Ticino also talks about the lessons he learned from narrowly missing out on winning a medal at the Olympic Games in Paris and how he intends to tackle the four years until Los Angeles 2028.
Noè Ponti, you returned on Sunday from three intense weeks of competition in Asia, where you became a serial winner in the short course World Cup. Tell us about your emotions.
The last few weeks have been a great experience, one of the best in my life. A lot has happened, I've won a lot and swum many records. Thousands of emotions, I would say. I also made new friends and got to know a lot of people. It was just mega.
You competed with Léon Marchand and kept up well with the Frenchman, who is regarded as the superswimmer par excellence after his four Olympic victories in Paris. Going toe-to-toe with a star like Marchand - you train for moments like this, don't you?
It would have been better if it had been the same in Paris. But no, of course it was also good in the last few weeks. Léon is one of the best athletes in the world at the moment - and not just in swimming. I was very close to him, in one competition we even won ex-aequo. Being able to swim against the best in the world like that was great fun.
In Shanghai, at the first of three World Cup stops this fall, you set a world record in the 50 m dolphin. Did you immediately realize what you had achieved?
I knew the world record because I had been thinking about this time for a year - or even a little longer. I knew that it could happen this year. After I struck, I saw the time of 21.67 seconds light up. I immediately thought: "Okay, awesome - world record."
A Swiss swimmer setting a world record is extremely rare and last happened in 1985 with Dano Halsall in the 50m crawl.
The thought of holding the world record and being able to say: "I'm the fastest in the world at this distance" does seem a bit crazy to me and is difficult to put into words. My personal best time is the current world record. Wow, that sounds really good. At the same time, it also means that I have to train from now on to keep improving, because otherwise the other swimmers will come and take my world record away from me again.
You mentioned that you've been thinking about the world record for over a year. Not all Swiss people think as big as you do.
You might think that Switzerland is a small nation and perhaps doesn't have that many swimmers. But there have been some good ones recently. But of course, it's not every day that a Swiss swims a world record. Almost never, in fact. That's why I'm just happy that I can be one of the first. Hopefully I will break even more world records.
You beat your first world record 14 days later in Singapore.
At the end of these competitions, I swam 21.50 seconds. It was the perfect race for that day. Overall, I lowered the record by 25 hundredths. That's huge over just 50 meters. But do you know what?
No.
I think I can swim even faster.
Because you didn't train very much before the starts this fall?
I could be in better shape, yes. Because before the first World Cup in Shanghai, I had only been back in training for three or four weeks. After the Olympic Games, I took a break for about a month and a half.
You didn't actually start training in the water again until around September 20.
From then on, I initially trained loosely once a day. The feeling for the water was back immediately. I didn't set myself any big goals for the World Cup. After all, I knew that I wouldn't arrive in optimal shape. But the long break was really good for my head. I was very relaxed before the competitions and felt absolutely no pressure. I was simply able to swim quickly.
You mention the pressure and that you were relaxed. Is that perhaps one of the lessons you learned from Paris?
When you lose, you can always learn things. You know afterwards that you can do better. Fourth and fifth place (in the 100 and 200 m dolphin - ed.) were not what I wanted in Paris. But I believe that there are thousands of athletes who would sign up to come fourth at the Olympics. But if you already have an Olympic medal (Ponti won bronze in the 100 m dolphin in Tokyo in 2021), your goal is not to finish fourth. Rather, you want to win. That has to be the case, otherwise it wouldn't make sense for me to still be swimming. But although I didn't achieve everything I wanted in Paris, I still swam very well there.
How important was the break after the Summer Games?
It was important. It gave me time to think about everything. In September, I met with my coaches for an open discussion. I told them what I thought didn't work and what we could improve. They saw it the same way I did.
What does that mean?
In the next two years, we will try a few new things in training. We want to create new stimuli. With the aim of finding out exactly what we need to do for the remaining two years until Los Angeles 2028. There is no room for error in this phase. But I think we will have time for testing over the next two years or so.
The first step for you now is the athlete RS.
In the first three weeks, the number of water training sessions is somewhat lower than usual. Nevertheless, that works well for me. Precisely because there is enough time until the next major event on the long track. The RS lasts until March, but I'll be back home training in Tenero from January. From then on, we'll start to really push again.
The 2025 World Championships in Singapore won't take place until October. Will you also be thinking about the world record in the 50-metre pool - or at earlier meetings?
Let's see. I know that I'm not only good on the short course, but also on the long course. But in recent years I've never really been able to show that at the peak in the summer. I was never able to perform at 100 percent. I need to find a solution so that I can do that in the future. The goal in Singapore is a world championship medal. And yes, the world record in the 50 m dolphin may also be an issue in the big pool. Andrei Govorov is the current world record holder. He thinks I'm the only one who can break his world record. Maybe not next year, but later - we'll see.
Looking ahead in the short term: The Swiss championships in the 25 m pool are in a week's time. Will you be competing there too?
Yes, but only on two days. I'll be sleeping at home on the third.
And after that?
It won't be long until the short course world championships. After the world records in the 50-metre dolphin and the European record in the 100-metre, I'm currently the best in the world. Of course you have big goals. I will try to swim as fast as possible in Budapest too. Again, without pressure, because I can't train in the RS in quite the same way as at home.