Lydia Jacoby is a 17-year-old American swimmer. She claimed the 100m Olympic breaststroke gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, on Tuesday. En route to her gold medal, teenager Jacoby stunned team-mate and defending champion Lilly King and South Africa’s Tatjana Schoen. The 17-year-old swimmer completed the swim in 1 min 04.95secs as compared to Tatjana’s 1:05.22 and Lilly’s 1:05.54.

Lydia was born on a Leap Day, February 29, 2004. She began swimming at the age of six with the Tsunami Swim Club in Seward, AK, USA. She took swimming lessons as a child because her family spends most of the time around water as both her parents are licensed boat captains.

Her philosophy in life: “The more pressure there is, the more I want to succeed.”

The teen, who was born and raised in Alaska, burst onto the international competitive swimming scene by clocking her personal best times in the 100m and 200m breaststroke events in 2020 and 2021. With this, she became the first swimmer from Alaska to qualify for the Olympic Games.

She went to the Seward High School, Seward where she was a part of the high school swim team. She set state records for Alaska in the 100-yard breaststroke in 2018 and 2019.

At 2020 end, Lydia committed to swimming in college for the University of Texas at Austin starting in the Fall of 2022.

At 14-years-old, she qualified for the US Olympic Trials in 2018. The same year, she won titles in the 100-yard breaststroke and 200-yard individual medley at the Alaska High School State Championships.

At the 2019 Alaska Age Group Championships, she competed in seven individual events, including swimming a 56.51 in the 100-yard freestyle and a 4:49.84 in the 400-yard individual medley.

In August 2019, she won the junior national champion title in the 100 breaststroke and later in 2019 became part of the US Junior National Team.

In a span of three years, she shed more than six seconds off her time in the 100-meter breaststroke. At a 2018 California meet, she swam 1:11.05 to win a USA Swimming Futures age-group title. At the US Olympic Trials in June, she swam 1:05.28 to clinch an Olympic berth. And in the Olympic finals, she swam 1:04.95.

The teen swimmer is also a singer and a guitar player. She has performed at Alaska folk festivals as a member of the Snow River String Band.