Tom Ponting’s extensive swimming career covered, among numerous tournaments, three editions of the Commonwealth Games and Summer Olympics. He claimed his first major international medal, bronze in the 100 metre butterfly, at the 1982 Commonwealth Games. He went on to win bronze in the same event at the 1983 Summer Universiade as a student at the University of Calgary. One year later, at the 1984 Summer Olympics, he finished ninth in the same event, sixth in the 200 metre butterfly, and won a silver medal (alongside Victor Davis, Sandy Goss, and Mike West) in the 4x100 metre medley relay. The following year he took home bronze medals in the 200 metre individual medley and the 4x100 m relay at the first Pan Pacific Championships. He then added four more medals to his collection at the 1986 Commonwealth Games: bronze and silver in the 100 m and 200 m butterfly respectively, silver in the 4x200 metre freestyle relay (with Goss and the non-Olympians Scott Flowers and Paul Szekula) and gold in the 4x100 m relay (alongside Davis, Goss, West, Alex Baumann, and the non-Olympians Claude Lamy and Darcy Wallingford). He added silver in the 200 m butterfly, bronze in the 4x200 m relay, and silver in the 4x100 m relay at the 1987 Pan Pacific Championships, and then attended the 1988 Summer Olympics, where he was seventh in the 100 m butterfly, fourth in the 200 m butterfly, and won another silver medal in the 4x100 m relay with Davis, Goss, and Tewksbury. He ended the decade strong by setting a world record in the 100 m butterfly in a March 1989 meet.
Entering the 1990s, Ponting defended his crown in the 4x100 m relay at that year’s Commonwealth Games, with Tewksbury, Marcel Gery, and Jon Cleveland. This quartet then earned silver in at the 1991 Pan Pacific Championships with the assistance of Stephen Clarke. In his final year of competition, 1992, he helped set a world record in the 4x100 m relay (alongside Cleveland, Tewksbury, and Stephen Vandermeulen) and finished 16th in the 100 m butterfly, 13th in the 200 m butterfly, and third in the 4x100 m relay at the 1992 Summer Olympics. Among his many honors were induction into the Alberta Sports (1996) and Canadian Olympic (1998) Halls of Fame. Following his retirement, he took up coaching.
Canada