Breast swimmer Lydia Jacoby, 17, has often presented her fine technique and the feeling for the necessary rhythm in front of spectators. It wasn’t always a pandemic. Sometimes you can see Lydia Jacoby on the videos from before in front of a devout audience: In the front of the stage, she stands with her teammates, who in this case must be called band members, plucks the double bass – and sometimes she even sings. A recording like hers Snow River String Band Performs the song “Sweet Verona” at the “Anchorage Folk Festival 2018”, finest Alaskan bluegrass, was viewed a few hundred times on Youtube between 2018 and Tuesday morning. On Tuesday evening more than 7,000 times. Lydia Jacoby was already an Olympic champion over 100 meters chest.
You don’t have to devote yourself to swimming from an early age to achieve your greatest goals – if that’s not good news for all the harpsichord or bassoon-playing children of this world who are also interested in sports! You don’t have to spend your whole youth at the Olympic base, at the sports school, in the C-team or under the wing of a trainer guru – as a child you don’t even necessarily need a 50-meter pool nearby to be an Olympic champion in the 50- To become a meter pool. You can always be the first if you just seem to believe in it.
Lydia Jacoby won the gold that Lilly King had planned
Tuesday lunchtime local time in Tokyo, Lydia Jacoby has tied her long red hair in a bun and is looking at astonished sports reporters from all over the world under her corona mask. To her right, on the edge of the podium, sits Lilly King, 24, the world record holder, the Olympic champion of Rio 2016, who won bronze this time. Just Bronze, as one must say when comparing the medal color with their expectations. Outside left: the South African Tatjana Schoenmaker, 24, silver. And in the middle: Lydia Jacoby, who grew up in the coastal town of Seward in Alaska, competed for the local Seward Tsunami Swim Club. She had won the gold that King had planned for it.
Just in Alaska on the double bass, now on the largest sports stage on the planet: “That I come from such a small club and from a state with so few inhabitants,” said Jacoby, “that shows everyone that you can do it, no matter where do you come from.”
But maybe this story of the first female swimmer from Alaska who ever qualified for the Olympics, and who then immediately won gold, is not good for generalizing messages. Incidentally, not as an encouragement to school bands, because they Snow River String Band there is no more, growing up has scattered the five young musicians in all directions. The Olympic champion Lydia Jacoby is more of one of those curiously lapping sensations for which only the Olympics can offer the right stage.
Also versed in the finest Alaskan bluegrass: Lydia Jacoby three years ago at the “Anchorage Folk Festival” with her ensemble “Snow River String Band”.
(Foto: Screenshot: SZ/Youtube)
Even Lilly King laughed. Even if sometimes a bit too loud to really believe how “happy for Lydia” she is. “I love to see,” said King, “how the future of the American breaststroke is turning the corner this way – and that I now have someone to go head-to-head with when we come back are at home! ” Yes, yes. On the other hand, American swimmers are always avowed to make history, making history. Until the heats in Tokyo, Lilly King had not lost a race over the 100 meter chest for five years. Lydia Jacoby was twelve at the time, raved about Lilly King at home in Alaska, had already broken her first age class records – but when she was in the spotlight at swimming competitions, it was because she got to sing the national anthem.
In addition: Lilly King is not just any of the new US swimmers who consistently conquer the podiums at the Olympics. In 2016 in Rio, she exposed herself with her sharp criticism of the Russian Julija Jefimowa, who was allowed to start despite several doping offenses. It was said that King even splashed the Russian woman with water – a real scandal, even if King denied any intention. “No international incidents today,” she said aloud New York Timeswhen she passed the US reporters on Tuesday – only good vibes, despite the missed opportunity. Lilly King knew that she was partly to blame for Jacoby’s sensation: Her 1: 05.54 minutes in the final were too far from her own world record (1: 04.13); Jacoby reached the surprise gold in 1: 04.95 minutes. That would probably not have been possible if the Tokyo Games had taken place last summer as originally planned.
Jacoby’s best time before the pandemic: 1:08:12 minutes. When the corona crisis hit Alaska in the spring of 2020, the swimming pool in Seward closed, so Jacoby’s mother – boat captain and like his father, often out and about in the nature reserves off Seward – rented an apartment in the capital, Anchorage. Daughter Lydia joined the local swimming club and trained for the first time all year round. Anchorage also has the only 50-meter pool in all of Alaska, open all year round. Up to now, this was not a matter of course for Lydia Jacoby either.
The young woman from Alaska is now a promise for swimming, but she can ask Lilly King how much work it is to maintain success. She still has to finish school in Alaska, then she will join an ambitious college team in Austin, Texas. And if it doesn’t work out with writing the story: Lydia Jacoby also plays the guitar very well.
.
