By Sentinel Staff
Watching from Sitka, local swim coach Kevin Knox was glued to the screen as Seward Tsunamis swimmer Lydia Jacoby earned an Olympics gold medal in the 100 meter breaststroke race Tokyo Monday.
“I was certainly floored by how well she did in her first 50, and to come home... For her to have such a great first half, you could see it right after her first pullout and she started swimming. I could tell... it was Lydia’s day yesterday,” the Baranof Barracudas coach said over the phone.
Jacoby’s gold medal is the first ever Olympic gold for Alaska in swimming. She is 17, a senior at Seward High School.
At Knox’s home, the air was electric during the brief race.
“She turned third and came home first, so it was pretty amazing to watch,” Knox said.
In a video now circulating online, swimmers and fans in Seward were exuberant, many of them literally jumping for joy, over Jacoby’s win. Knox thinks that those feelings were common throughout the Alaska swim community.
Jacoby’s win came as a surprise to many, but for Knox her win in the final race illustrates the power of potential.
“It can be anybody’s game on any day. Again the 400 free for both men and women, (Ariarne) Titmus taking it from (Katie) Ledecky and the Tunisian kid (Ahmed Hafnaoui, a teen like Jacoby) barely sneaks in in 8th place to get into the finals and he takes gold. You never know who’s going to rise to the occasion, and it could be you,” Knox said.
He observed that Olympic years tend to drive increased athletic participation.
“Olympic years, there’s always the Olympic bump. There’s always that bump in part,” Knox said, “but when you have something as big as Lydia’s swim happen, it draws that much more interest into the sport and it will be big for everybody for sure.”
On the local swim front, Knox pointed out that the Barracudas are holding tryouts 2 p.m. Friday at the Blatchley pool.
