With Worlds B Cut, Guyana’s Raekwon Noel Feels Like He Belongs
The time took Raekwon Noel by surprise so much that it required a 1 a.m. text message to realize what he’d achieved.
Noel had booked a busy summer after his freshman year at Indiana University. The New York native, who represents Guyana internationally, took part in the inaugural Pan American Aquatics Championships in May, then the Indy Summer Cup as a tune-up for a potential swim at the 2025 World Aquatics Championships.
He won four races in Pan Ams in Medellin, Colombia, then took to essentially home waters in Indy to fine-tune details and try different events. So when the butterflier went 1:50.42 in the 200 freestyle at the IU Natatorium without the benefit of a taper, he knew the best time in a “sleeper event” he only races around once a year was good. He didn’t think to check it against the time standards World Aquatics set for this year’s championships in Singapore.
Until his mom, Ushaka Noel, sent him a text that night letting her son know he’d gotten under the consideration cut for Worlds, a first for a swimmer from the South American nation.
“I was just thankful and completely floored that I even did it,” Noel said last week.
The shocker of a swim is the latest straddling of seeming opposites for Noel. He’s improved greatly in his year at Indiana, though he remembers entering uncertain if he’d have what it took to stay there. He has the Olympic experience of occupying Guyana’s male Universality spot at the 2024 Olympics, but that left him with, “a lot of imposter syndrome.”
A fast spring is rectifying that, and it has Noel dreaming of more.
Noel was at once surprised by the B cut time and also expecting progress. He’s seen himself grow immensely in Ray Looze’s program in Bloomington, into a faster and more confident swimmer. Dropping a best time by 2.5 seconds without a taper, though, outstripped those hopes.
“A year ago, I would never see myself qualifying for Worlds or doing the times I’m doing right now,” Noel said. “When I came into IU, I had low expectations for myself. I wasn’t sure that I was going to still be here at this point in time. And just going into Pan American Games, I was with an empty mind and just swimming to the best I can. I just saw major improvement over the past couple months.”
That it was the 200 free was not exactly in the plans. Noel swam the 100 back, 100 fly, 200 back and 200 fly at his first Big Tens this February. At the Pan Am Championships, he won the 100 fly, 200 fly, 100 back and 400 free. The latter is the event he swam at the Olympics last year, finishing 34th in a Guyanese record 4:02.29 as one of only five Olympians from the country.
Noel had last swum the 200 free long course at Speedo Sectionals in 2024, at 1:52.84, and before that, at the CARIFTA Championship in 2023. While in his arsenal, it isn’t a specialty.
Or at least it wasn’t. Without a taper, Noel was just feeling out the swim at the Indy Summer Cup. Instead, he pushed .01 seconds under the B cut for Worlds.
“The training just worked, like it worked perfectly,” he said. “When you go to a college, you’re like, OK, so I’m taking this risk of, is the training going to work? Or is it going to plateau? And the first two months, I was like, Oh, this is kind of hard. And then we eventually swam a meet and I was throwing out best times at dual meets, which is crazy.”
Noel has a deep relationship with the country he represents internationally. He was born in New York and finished high school in New Jersey. But from toddlerhood to middle school, he was raised in Guyana, calling his time training there “the greatest experiences of my life.” He’s seen the way in which resources for the sport are limited in his home country and he hopes getting a Worlds cut can move the needle on the sport’s profile back home.
While he works toward that, he’ll head to Worlds with a much different sense of himself. He’s an Olympian, yes, with three previous Worlds (two long-course, plus the 2021 short-course meet when he was 15) under his belt who holds just about every non-breaststroke national record. But more vital is the feeling that he’s earned his way there this time.
“I was going into the Olympics last year with a lot of imposter syndrome, just saying, oh, I don’t belong here. I just can’t do it. I don’t know why I’m doing this,” he said. “And I was frustrated because I didn’t really qualify – the country just sent us because me and this other girl, we were the two fastest swimmers. So I was frustrated at the point that I didn’t want to swim. But I felt proud to represent my country.”
