When 23-year-old Noe Ponti touched the wall at the end of the 100m butterfly final at last year’s World Short Course Championships, his hand covered his mouth in disbelief. Cameras caught his coach Massimo Meloni choking back tears. The time on the board, 47.71, was faster than anyone had gone before, erasing the great Caeleb Dressel’s World Record off the books from 2020.

It marked the end of a tough year for Ponti, one that started with hopes and dreams of a second trip to the top of the Olympic podium.

Three years after Ponti won a surprise bronze in the 100m butterfly in Tokyo, he was a favourite to win medals in both the 100m and 200m butterfly in Paris. Leading into the Games, he was ranked second in the world in the 100m butterfly at 50.16, and swimming better than he ever had. He was on form in Paris, but he returned home with no medals - a fourth place finish in the 100m butterfly following a fifth place in the 200m.

After the Olympics, Ponti spent six weeks out of the pool, seeing life and swimming from a different perspective. Following three quick weeks of training in the fall, Ponti raced at the first stop of the World Aquatics Swimming World Cup in Shanghai, China, breaking the 50m butterfly world record in the heats, the first of his career. Two weeks later in Singapore, he broke the record again and won triple crowns in both the 50m and 100m butterfly, cashing in big after a disappointing Olympics.

Following the World Cups, he came home to complete his mandatory military service for Switzerland.

“I was still able to swim,” Ponti told World Aquatics. “Not as much as I’d like to, but in the first few weeks, 3-4x a week and then was able to train almost normally going into (World Short Course Championships).

“You’re in touch with family. On the weekends you can go home so it’s pretty chill. Instead of ten training sessions a week, we were maybe doing five. It’s nothing crazy.

“The last ten days, they let me go home to prepare for the World Championships.”

Ponti was the heavy favourite at the World Aquatics Swimming Championships (25m) in Budapest in the 50m and 100m butterfly, and he delivered emphatically. Managing pressure and nerves was always a struggle for him, but this was the first time he was able to conquer it.

Two more times he broke the world record in the 50m, bringing the record from 21.75 at the start of the year to 21.32 by the end of the meet.

In the 100m, perhaps one of the most talked about of the 22 individual world records set at the meet, Ponti shaved seven tenths off his best time in breaking the record set by generational talent Caeleb Dressel four years prior. Ponti followed suit by sitting on the lane line, punching the water and screaming in jubilation.

He perhaps thought this moment would have occurred on the lane lines at the La Defense Arena in Paris earlier that year, but it wasn’t meant to be. Instead, that loss at the Games helped him swim to his best at the end of the year in short-course meters.

“In Budapest and the World Cup, it made me more hungry and a bit more competitive during training,” Ponti said. “I wanted to win at the Olympics and I wanted that more than the other guys I think. In the end, it’s about how much you want it and in the end, everything needs to be perfect. But it really helped me to grow.

“Of course it’s not nice to get fourth at the Olympics, but I was going into Paris aiming for quite more than fourth.

“It gave me extra motivation and determination to do something more and I knew I could do something more and I learned from my mistakes and learned what I could do better and so I was able to do so. All the rest, I didn’t have any problems so I was really relaxed. That also helps. If the environment you are surrounded by and everything is good and you’re doing well mentally then it’s automatically easier to perform better.”

On the Marquee

Despite missing the Olympic podium in Paris, Ponti has generated a lot of buzz for swimming off his short course success in Switzerland, a nation more known for producing champions in the Winter Olympics than in the Summer. After the recent retirement of Tennis legend Roger Federer, ski jumper Marco Odermatt has taken the reins as perhaps the best athlete in Switzerland, fresh off a Giant Slalom gold at the last Olympics in Beijing, and has amassed over half a million followers on Instagram.

Ponti, who at age 24 has 73,000 followers on the app, doesn’t have the following of Odermatt, but he’s started the conversation.

A year before Odermatt’s breakthrough gold, Ponti made history for Swiss Swimming alongside teammate Jeremy Desplanches at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Within 24 hours, Desplanches and Ponti won bronze medals in their respective events, the first swimming medals for Switzerland at the Games after debuting swimmers in Antwerp 1920. Three years later, Roman Mityukov won another bronze for the country in the 200m backstroke, sparking a movement in the country known for skiing.

Ponti, who has lived and trained in the southern part of Switzerland in Locarno his entire life, has noticed a change in attention to swimming.

“People recognize me in the streets and know who I am,” Ponti said. “People watch swimming, maybe because of me, but they started to watch and that’s good for sure. It’s starting to grow a little bit, thanks to the Olympics with Roman and me throughout the World Cups and World Champs. We are still far away from skiing in Switzerland because that’s the biggest sport but it’s something that’s moving.

“In a small country, it’s going to be hard to repeat (what we have now) but they’re trying to make swimming in Switzerland more professional because the other sports are super professional. It’s growing and it’s going to take time.

“I’m proud of representing my country at the highest level and hope to do so as long as possible.”

Eyes on July

Later this month, Ponti, coached by Massimo Meloni and Andrea Mercuri will be one of the favorites for gold at the 22nd World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, the site of one of his four 50m butterfly world records last year, in the 50m and 100m butterfly. He currently sits second in the world rankings in the 100m at 50.27, and fourth in the 50m butterfly at 22.77, similar to where he was last year going into the Olympics.

But this year, he is taking a more relaxed approach to everything - training, racing, life. He has devoted a lot of time to his friends and enriching his life outside of the pool, taking short vacations to nearby Italy with his teammates.

“I ate well and relaxed and turned off my mind,” Ponti said of a spring trip to Italy. “It was nice to think about other things. If you go for one night somewhere else, that can help you get out of your routine.”

“Physically we could go on and on and it’s not a problem, but mentally I need to take a step back and recharge. It might not seem like a lot, but three months is still a long time to go,” Ponti told World Aquatics in April of this year. “I’m trying to swim but apart from swimming find things to help me enjoy my life because swimming is not the only thing in our life. You don’t have a lot of time for these things but you try to find the time for that. The happier you are, the better you will swim.”

The 200m has been dropped from his program as he’s focusing on the shorter distance in this new Olympic cycle. The volume is less but the training intensity is still there, totalling up to 10x pool sessions and four gym sessions in a typical week. It was this relaxed attitude towards swimming and life that has helped Ponti swim at the top of his game the last 10 months, where a world record at the end of the summer is certainly possible.

The aforementioned Caeleb Dressel holds the 100m butterfly world record in long course at 49.45 from 2021, while the 22.27 50m world mark from 2018 appears to be ready to break any time soon.

Ponti has already broken one Dressel record in his career, is the long course record within reach for him?

“I don’t know!” Ponti said with a smirk. “I think 49 is possible. I think last year it was very doable but of course it went how it went. I think it’s very possible. The 50m fly, I think I can go quite fast.

“But in the end, what matters to me is to go home with a medal because that’s the only one I’m missing. I have European - short course, long course, World Short Course, an Olympic medal but long course World Champs. (I’ve) never won a medal, only fourth. So I’d like to go home with a medal. It’s more about the place than the time. I’m sure I’m able to swim fast and I have some times in mind, but it’s sometimes better not to think about that.”