Lydia Jacoby on shifting her mindset: “I’d kind of hide behind that gamer title"

Lydia Jacoby’s Olympic gold medal win in the women’s 100m breaststroke final at Tokyo 2020 may have been a surprise, as she defeated the defending Olympic champion and world record holder Lilly King, but her presence in the Japanese capital was not.

“When the ticket sales became available, my parents were like, ‘Oh, it’d be really cool if we could go and watch,” Jacoby said in an exclusive interview with the Olympics.com Podcast. “So, we were gonna go to Japan for a little while, and then, go to Tokyo and watch some Olympic stuff.”

But when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the Games to be pushed to 2021, Jacoby’s potential vantage point for the Tokyo Olympics started to shift.

“It became a real possibility that I would actually be in the Games, not just in the stands,” said Jacoby, who qualified for the Olympic trials at 14.

Jacoby, of course, would go on to qualify for Tokyo. The then 17-year-old arrived at the Olympic Games with little fanfare, entering a race that included King, Tatjana Schoenmaker of South Africa, who set the Olympic record in the semi-finals, and other world medallists.

“No one was talking about me going into that race,” recalls Jacoby. “I don’t think my name was even mentioned once… in that kind of lead-up to that race.”

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Jacoby: Rising to the moment

That she wasn’t the centre of attention in the buildup to the 100m breast final doesn’t bother Jacoby who admits she was the newbie in the field.

“I broke out at the Olympic trials, so I had never really been in that limelight before,” she said. “I didn’t really feel any of sort of way about it.”

It also helped her swim freely in the final after a nerve-filled semifinal.

“I kind of psyched myself out because I was like, ‘Well, why aren’t I more nervous [to swim in the Olympics]? I should be nervous,’” said Jacoby of her mindset at the Games. “So I made myself, like, sickeningly nervous and I didn’t swim as well.

“Coming into finals, I was like, I just need to let it go,” she continued. “I’m 17, I made an Olympic team. I have nothing to prove, nothing to lose.”

That mindset was more familiar, more comfortable for the teenager from Alaska who says she feels like she rises to meet the moment.

“I refer to myself as a gamer, I’m not always the fastest person in practice,” she admits.

Her gamer instinct kicked in as she took the gold medal in a race that today she can’t recall much of.

“When I have a really good race,” she says, “I, like, completely black out.”

'Hitting the wall' after Tokyo 2020

Following the Games, Jacoby needed a reset.

Her ‘gamer’ mentality that took her to the highest highs was now, in some ways, holding her back.

“I’d kind of hide behind that gamer title, I think sometimes,” Jacoby explained. “If I was having a bad practice, I’d just be like, ‘Well, it’s fine. I’m not in a race, it’s fine.’ I’d use that as a defense.”

It’s something that she’s working on at her new training base at Texas A&M, where she moved in 2022 after missing out on the World Championships in Budapest.

Not making that global team, she says, was a wake-up call that her motivation had waned since the Games. The high of becoming Olympic champion at first motivated her to want more, but then she “hit a wall.”

She graduated high school early, making swimming her sole focus.

It wasn’t working.

“My mind wasn’t really there in it,” she said. “When I missed the Worlds team… that was when I really was like, ‘Oh, I need to get my [expletive] together.’”

A year later, Jacoby says she feels like she’s in a good place and is looking forward to a return trip to the Games at next summer’s Paris 2024 Olympics.

First, of course, she’ll face the world once again at the global event in Fukuoka.

“I feel like I’ve gained a lot of confidence in my training… since I’ve come to Texas,” said Jacoby. “I think that’ll all be a huge benefit for me going into this summer, no doubt.”

Jacoby is set to race in the 100m breaststroke finals Tuesday (25 July).