Noè Ponti swims to the silver medal at the World Championships in Singapore – under water he is a true dolphin

Sprints are like roulette, Noè Ponti's coach, Massimo Meloni, had said shortly before leaving for Asia. And the ball rolls through foaming spray. When the World Championship finalists in Singapore began plowing through the water with their powerful arm strokes after their opening dive in the 50m butterfly, they were barely visible.

Ponti had a slight advantage after 45 meters, but then the powerhouse Maxime Grousset threw everything into his last three strokes. He finished in 22.48 seconds, three hundredths of a second ahead of Ponti. The Frenchman and the Swiss had a duel at the highest level: only three swimmers have ever been faster than Grousset, and Ponti is now right behind him as number five in the history of this discipline. With a time of 22.51, he improved his own national record by 14 hundredths.

This may not seem particularly spectacular when you consider that Ponti swam multiple world records in the short course last late fall and won three world titles , including the short butterfly sprint. But there is a key difference between the short and long courses: In the 25-meter pool, there are more turns, which allows Ponti to play to his greatest strength—the diving phase.

The swimmers are allowed to stay underwater for a maximum of 15 meters after the start and each turn. They kick their legs like fish with their tails. According to his coach, Ponti is the best swimmer in the world underwater, a true dolphin. He also demonstrated this strength after the start in the World Championship final in Singapore.

The fact that he didn't quite win gold in the end wasn't so bad for the 24-year-old. He said after the race that he had now proven to everyone that he was also among the world's best on the long track. In fact, he won his first World Championship medal in the long pool.

A look back reveals how important this is to him: In 2023, Ponti traveled to the World Championships in Fukuoka as a medal contender and failed miserably. He didn't even qualify for the final in the 50m butterfly, for which he tearfully apologized to his accompanying family. Yet Japan had been a place of strength for him; in 2021, he had surprisingly won Olympic bronze in Tokyo.

The tearful Ponti of Fukuoka clearly demonstrated that a sensitive person lies beneath his muscular body. It wasn't the first time he lacked a modicum of mental readiness, and it wouldn't be the last. Ponti had experienced how important mental balance is to him shortly after his Olympic dream of Tokyo.

The swimmer transferred to North Carolina State University in the USA, but couldn't cope with campus life, suffered burnout, and quit training after just a few weeks. Back in Tenero with his coach Meloni, he worked for two and a half years focused on the 2024 Summer Games in Paris .

But his nerves were to get the better of him there too. Ponti finished fifth in the 200m and fourth in the 100m butterfly. These are outstanding results for a Swiss swimmer. But Ponti also said after the shorter-distance race that he would have been truly satisfied with only one medal: the gold one.

The swimmer later explained that he was physically ready in Paris, but hadn't been able to completely block out personal problems. Mentally, he was lacking one or two percent. "And that's not possible at this level." To this day, he refuses to say exactly what those personal concerns were. But given his story, the fact that he mentions them says a lot.

Ponti isn't just sensitive, he also tries to deal with it professionally. He discusses his psychological weaknesses with his mental coach and develops solutions. He quickly overcame the worries of midsummer 2024. When he returned to swimming races for the first time in late autumn as part of the World Cup, he achieved consecutive victories and records. "I was a mental monster back then," he says, "nothing could deter me from my path."

After the Olympic Games, Ponti wasn't defeated in a single butterfly race until the World Championship final in Singapore. And it took a Grousset at his best to narrowly beat him. The Swiss will now concentrate fully on his strongest discipline, the 100m butterfly. He will be given a short break; the series is scheduled for Friday, and the final is scheduled for Saturday.

Ponti clearly demonstrated in the short sprint that he is not lacking in basic speed. This puts him among the favorites at the distance twice as long. The 50 and 100 meters will remain his focus in the future. This is due to the fact that the 50 meter butterfly will also be part of the Olympic program starting in 2028.

The 200 meters, which Ponti always swam until Paris 2024, are taking a back seat, at least for the time being. This is despite his coach Meloni saying that his swimmer is probably at his strongest over 200 meters. But Ponti doesn't like these extremely strenuous races.

He and his coach know only too well what it means when your head isn't 100 percent on board.