Head of Competitive Sports Markus Buck talks about the development of swimming, potential in the team and financial challenges after the most successful long course world championships ever from a Swiss perspective.
04.08.2025, 09:24
04.08.2025, 09:53
SDA
Thanks to Noè Ponti's two silver medals in the 50 and 100 m dolphin, Switzerland is more successful in Singapore than ever before at a swimming world championship held in the 50 m pool. Markus Buck, Head of Competitive Sports at Swiss Aquatics, takes stock in an interview with the Keystone-SDA news agency and also talks about the dynamic development in swimming and the challenges facing the association.
Markus Buck, Noè Ponti is the first Swiss swimmer to win two medals at a long course world championship. His coach Massimo Meloni said that Ponti is a shark compared to a normal swimmer. Is he the greatest talent Switzerland has ever had?
He is an outstanding talent, yes. But having talent is one thing. Of the finalists in the 100 m dolphin, the first five are at least as talented as Noè. Training smart is just as important. He and his coach and the team behind the scenes in Tenero are doing an excellent job. They also learn from their mistakes, take them to heart and come back stronger after setbacks. Noè is now benefiting from the experience he has gained over the years.
With a better stroke in the 50 m dolphin, Ponti would have won gold, and he wasn't perfect in the 100 m dolphin either. Is that where he still has the most potential?
He did have problems with his stroke a few times. However, he has now moved into a new realm in the 100 m dolphin with a time under 50 seconds (49.83). It is clear that the race plan no longer works as well as before. At the moment of impact, decisions have to be made in fractions of a second. Whether it would have been better to make one less arm movement is speculation. The fact that he didn't make such a bad decision is underlined by the silver medal. However, now that he is at a higher level, the stroke is certainly something that needs to be prepared for in training over the long term.
Roman Mityukov's 7th place in the 200m backstroke final did not go as planned, after he had stood on the podium at the Olympic Games in Paris and at the two previous world championships. How much of a disappointment is that?
We can't ask more of the athletes than that they improve year after year and that they deliver their best performances at the season's peak. Roman achieved this with the Swiss record in the semi-final. He didn't make any major mistakes in the final either, he was focused. Even if he had swum as well as he did in the semi-final, he would have been more than two tenths short of a medal. If the competition has become so much faster since Paris 2024, we have to acknowledge that. He will now analyze the whole thing in depth with his coach Clément Bailly. He has already told me that he will come back stronger. That's exactly what characterizes an athlete like him and is needed at this level in order to remain competitive in the future.
Apart from Ponti and Mityukov, none of the Swiss team made it through the heats. What is your overall assessment?
I'm satisfied, with the exception of Lisa (Mamié), who fell ill, everyone achieved personal records or season's best times. It should not be forgotten that the climate here in Singapore is extremely difficult (hot and humid). We knew that Antonio (Djakovic) and Lisa were not at 100 percent, but it was still important for them to get to the World Championships. We as an association stand behind them and trust them to get back to their old strength. That's important, otherwise there won't be the mutual trust that is needed for long-term, successful cooperation.
You refer to the current generation as the golden generation. What does it look like behind the scenes?
All in all, we can be very satisfied. What's more, Ponti (24), Mityukov (25) and Djakovic (22) are all still young and should still be in full swing for the 2028 Olympic Games. Thierry Bollin (25) is then planning to really go for it again, as the 50 m backstroke is now an Olympic event. With Lisa Mamié, we are looking from year to year. Fortunately, things are also looking good for young talent. At the U23 European Championships, we made many finals, and this year we won medals at the Junior European Championships as well as at the EYOF (European Youth Olympic Festival). However, it would be a little presumptuous to expect the next generation to be as exceptional as this one. The task now is simply to gradually develop all the athletes, just as we have done with this generation. Then we'll see. The World Championships have shown how dynamically swimming is developing.
Speaking of dynamic development. There were world records galore at the 2009 World Championships in Rome thanks to high-tech suits. Because such full-body suits were banned in 2010, it seemed difficult to beat them. Now most of them have been wiped out. What do you say to that?
That's what our sport with the element of water is all about. New solutions are always being found to make it even faster. There is no standing still, and that creates enormous pressure on the athletes and coaches, but also on us as an association. We have to invest more and more and put in more and more effort. In this respect, we are doing well at the moment. We have a good team and are very broadly based, including in terms of sports science, medicine and mental health. But the financial side is a big challenge. On the one hand, there are the federal government's savings plans, and on the other, there will be a system change in sports funding in Switzerland in 2027. I also assume that this will result in a loss of funding for us. We can't wait and see, we have to make sure that we can generate as much money as possible ourselves. Ponti's successes will of course help with this.
