Lydia Alice Jacoby (born February 29, 2004) is an American professional swimmer. She was the first Alaskan to qualify for an Olympic Games in swimming, competing at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2021, where she won the gold medal in the 100-meter breaststroke with a time of 1:04.95, which was the fastest time ever achieved by a female American swimmer in the event in the 17–18 age group. Later in the year, she was the overall highest scoring female American competitor at the 2021 FINA Swimming World Cup. In 2022, she became the fastest female American swimmer in history in the 100-yard breaststroke for the 17–18 age group with a national age group record time of 57.54 seconds. In 2023, she further lowered the record to a time of 57.45 seconds, then 57.29 seconds, and set a national age group record of 2:04.32 for the girls 17–18 age group in the 200-yard breaststroke. She is the 2023 NCAA Division I champion in the women's 100-yard breaststroke.
Jacoby was born in Anchorage, Alaska and raised in Seward, Alaska. She started swimming when she was six years old with her local swim team, the Seward Tsunami Swim Club. By the time Jacoby was 12 years old, she had broken her first Alaska state record in swimming. For high school, she started attending Seward High School in Seward in 2018, where she swam as part of the high school swim team, setting high school state records for Alaska in the 100-yard breaststroke in both 2018 and 2019. In 2020, she opted not to compete on the school swim team due to the COVID-19 pandemic, instead choosing to be home-schooled.
At the end of the 2020 year, Jacoby committed to swimming in college for the University of Texas at Austin starting in the fall of 2022. One of the college majors she expressed interest in at the time of committing to the University of Texas was fashion design. She returned to Seward High School in the fall of 2021 for her senior year. She finished off her senior year swimming scholastically for Seward High School as well and graduated as valedictorian of her high school class. She also served on her high school newspaper as a columnist and appeared in Port City Players productions, theatre productions, more than once.
In the autumn of 2022, Jacoby started attending the University of Texas at Austin, majoring in textiles and apparel, and began competing collegiately for the Texas Longhorns.
Jacoby sang, wrote songs, and played double bass as part of a bluegrass band named the Snow River String Band for six years performing at the Anchorage Folk Festival multiple times prior to 2021 (when she turned 17 years old). In addition to bass and singing, Jacoby can play guitar and piano.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Jacoby was out of the pool for two months and found other forms of staying active including skiing and running with ice cleats. Jacoby and her father made a makeshift weight rack in the garage during the pandemic so she could continue lifting weights as well. When pools re-opened in Alaska, the pool in Seward remained temporarily closed so Jacoby practiced at Service High School in Anchorage with the Northern Lights Swim Club. Her mother, Leslie Jacoby, helped with commuting to the pool and renting an apartment to make swim practices.
2018–2019: State titles and making the U.S. Junior National Team
Jacoby first qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials in late 2018 when she was 14 years old. This first qualification was in the 100-meter breaststroke. She swam her qualifying time at the year's U.S. Winter National Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina. That same year, she won titles in the 100-yard breaststroke and 200-yard individual medley at the Alaska High School State Championships. Her time of 2:09.31 in the 200-yard individual medley won her the state title in that event for girl's high school swimming. Her time of 1:03.11 in the 100-yard breaststroke won her the girl's high school state title in that event as well as setting a new Alaska state record. The following year, she broke the Alaska state record she set in the girl's 100-yard breaststroke in 2018 with a time of 1:00.61. Her swim also won her the title in the event at the 2019 Alaska State High School Championships. She took third in the state in the girl's 200-yard individual medley with a time of 2:09.83.
At the 2019 Alaska Age Group Championships, held in February 2019, Jacoby competed in seven individual events including winning the 100-yard breaststroke with a time of 1:02.68, the 200-yard breaststroke with a 2:28.65, and the 200-yard individual medley in 2:10.58. One month later, she competed in five individual events at the 2019 Northwest Speedo Sectionals swim meet held at King County Aquatic Center in Federal Way, Washington, including swimming a 1:00.42 in the 100-yard breaststroke to place second and finish less than three-tenths of a second behind first-place finisher Kaitlyn Dobler. Five months later, in August, she won the junior national champion title in the 100-meter breaststroke at the Speedo Junior National Championships. Based on her results, she was named to the U.S. Junior National Team later in 2019. For the whole 2019 year, Jacoby ranked 16th in the United States for the 100-meter breaststroke.
2020–2021: Olympic champion at 17 years of age
In 2020 Jacoby qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials in swimming in two events for the first time, the 100-meter and 200-meter breaststroke events. At the time she was one of 12 swimmers in the history of the state of Alaska to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Trials in swimming. Towards the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, in March 2020, she expressed relief about the 2020 Olympic Games being postponed due to unfair conditions created with some pools closed and others open, sharing her perspective with Anchorage Daily News, "I feel like I'm in a good place now, because when they closed the pool I was really concerned about the Olympics and the trials — it's not a fair environment, because not everybody's pools are closed." On November 6, 2020, at the 2020 Kenai Peninsula Virtual Invite, Jacoby swam a personal best time and set a new record for the state of Alaska in the 100-yard breaststroke with a time of 1:00.16.
At the 2020 U.S. Open Swimming Championships, the only international championships hosted by USA Swimming in 2020 and held in December in San Antonio, Texas when Jacoby was 16 years old, she won the silver medal in the 100-meter breaststroke with a personal best time of 1:07.57, finishing only behind gold medalist Anna Elendt of Germany, which made her the highest ranking female American swimmer at the Championships in the event. The time became the second fastest time swam by an American female in the race in the 15–16 age group in history behind Megan Quann who won the gold medal in the event at the 2000 Summer Olympics at 16 years of age with a time of 1:07.05. Jacoby dropped time off her 200-meter breaststroke swim at the 2020 U.S. Open as well, a total drop of about five seconds resulting in a new personal record time of 2:32.36 and a thirteenth-place finish. Based on her time of 1:07.57 in the 100-meter breaststroke, she ranked as the third-fastest junior American female performer in the event for the year and was named to the 2021 roster for the U.S. Junior National swim team in the 100-meter breaststroke in affiliation with the club team she first started swimming with, the Seward Tsunami Swim Club. At the 2021 Northern Lights Swim Club Winter Time Trial in January 2021, Jacoby broke the minute mark in her 100-yard breaststroke swimming a time of 59.87. By the end of March 2021, Jacoby lowered her 100-yard breaststroke time to a 59.35 and her 200-yard breaststroke to a 2:08.61.
2021 TYR Pro Swim Series – Mission Viejo
In April 2021, less than two months after she turned 17 years old, Jacoby took second place in the finals of the 100-meter long course breaststroke at the TYR Pro Swim Series swim meet in Mission Viejo, California with a personal record time of 1:06.38. She finished behind 2016 Olympic gold medalist and world record holder in the event, Lilly King, and before 2019 Pan American Games gold medalist in the event Annie Lazor. Jacoby's swim garnered press coverage from NBC Sports, which featured her swim as a story highlight of the competition heading into the 2020 Olympic Trials in swimming in June 2021. Jacoby's swim was the sixth-fastest time in the world for women in the event so far in the 2021 year. It also catapulted her to the mark of the 14th fastest U.S. female swimmer in the event in history, and third fastest in the event in history for the U.S. females 17–18 age group. In the same meet, she lowered her personal record in the 200-meter breaststroke by almost five seconds, swimming a time of 2:27.39 to win the b-final. She also competed in the 200-meter individual medley, swimming a new personal record and finishing with a time of 2:29.38 in the preliminaries. Her times in the 100-meter breaststroke and 200-meter breaststroke were fast enough to secure her spot in both events for Wave II of the 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials.