Eye-opening Kenyan trip fires Switzerland’s world record-breaking swimmer Noe Ponti

SINGAPORE – Noe Ponti’s career has taken him to many places around the world, with the Swiss swimmer often travelling to different countries for competitions.

But it was a two-week trip to Kenya after the Paris Olympics that not only changed his outlook on life, but also helped propel him to faster times in the pool.

In August, the 23-year-old, having suffered the disappointment of returning from the Games empty-handed, travelled to the small coastal town of Watamu, about 105km from Mombasa, to help a friend who is building a school there.

What struck him was how the locals, even though they do not have much in terms of materialistic things, are carefree and always smiling, always happy.

“This makes you really see the world in a different perspective, because we’re always complaining about everything,” Ponti told The Straits Times on the sidelines of a media session at Grand Mercure Singapore Roxy on Oct 28 ahead of the Singapore leg of the World Aquatics Swimming World Cup.

“We have everything that we need and they have nothing, but still, they’re enjoying life more than we do. The goal is just to try to enjoy life as much as possible and focus on the positive things, not the negative things.”

The event, which is the third and final leg of the short-course series, runs from Oct 31 to Nov 2 at the OCBC Aquatic Centre.

The stakes are high going into the Singapore event, with Ponti second and just 1.4 points behind French star Leon Marchand, who

won four gold medals at the Paris Olympics,

in the men’s individual rankings of the Swimming World Cup.

In the Shanghai and Incheon stops of the short-course series, Ponti won five golds, one silver and one bronze. At the China leg, he also became the first Swiss to set a world record in a World Aquatics-approved event since 1985 with his 21.67-second effort in the 50m butterfly.

And his current hot form has a lot to do with his new mindset.

He said: “The biggest goal is to just enjoy what I’m doing right now, have fun, and it’s what I’ve been having the past few weeks – just really relax and have fun with other guys.

“We know it’s a World Cup, we know it’s really important. But, at the same time as soon as we’re not racing, we’re just talking, having fun, hanging out and stuff like that.”

While Ponti missed out on his goal of winning a medal at his second Olympics in Paris, he believes the experience will only drive him to do better in future.

He was a mere 0.1sec from a podium spot after finishing fourth in the 100m butterfly, the event in which he had bagged a bronze at the delayed Games in Tokyo in 2021.

In the 200m butterfly, he was fifth with a personal best and national record of 1min 54.14sec.

Reflecting on Paris, he said: “It wasn’t the outcome I wished for.

“But still, I think I could learn a lot from it, and I think it’s going to be good for me also. It’s given me some more motivation for the next couple of years.”

Ponti is also driven by the desire to promote swimming back home. Just Switzerland’s fourth swimming Olympic medallist, he acknowledged that swimming is nowhere near as popular as winter sports, but his achievements have got the people in his canton of Ticino excited.

He said: “That’s also my goal – to make swimming a little bit more of a bigger sport in Switzerland, also for the future generations because that’s important.”

Also making waves at the World Cup is American Kate Douglass, who is locked in a fierce battle for the top spot in the women’s standings with compatriot Regan Smith.

Smith has 118.4 points, with Douglass just 0.1 points adrift. Like Ponti, the latter claimed her first individual world record after clocking 2:14.16 in the women’s 200m breaststroke in South Korea on Oct 25.

The reigning 200m breaststroke Olympic champion, who has won back-to-back 200m medley golds at the past two world championships, Douglass has finished on top of the podium seven times in the 2024 World Cup.

The 22-year-old said: “It’s been a lot of racing. It’s not really what I’m used to doing and trying to figure out how to train through it has been a little bit of trial and error.

“I feel like that’s why I’m optimistic that maybe I’ve kind of figured out how to train properly for this kind of racing and maybe this weekend I’ll be able to go for some best times.”

Duncan Scott, who won a gold and silver at the Paris Games to bring his total medal tally at the Olympics to eight, is also looking forward to racing in Singapore.

The Scot, 27, said: “There’s so many different elements to it (swimming) that I do love. At competitions like these, I love going against the best in the world week in, week out, it’s something Chad (le Clos) does so well.”

He is also relishing the battles with the upstarts, noting: “There’s the other element, which is seeing the next generation come through.

“It’s not the reason I started the sport but, over the last few years, it’s something I’m now aware of and the impact that it has.”