Olympic champion Lydia Jacoby aims big: "I'd love to claim my first world title", and the world record

There's the saying that goes 'Aim for the stars, and even if you miss, you'll land among the clouds'.

It's quite clear that having won an unexpected Olympic gold medal in the women's 100m breaststroke last summer at the delayed Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 in 2021, Lydia Jacoby continues to do exactly that.

The Alaskan – the first swimmer from her state to make the U.S. Olympic team, let alone win a medal – wants more. A first World Championships gold medal this June, and perhaps the world record in her pet event, currently owned by teammate Lilly King.

"I'd love to claim my first world title," she told SwimSwam in an interview this week, before stopping herself. Aim for the stars, right?

"Hopefully make the Worlds team, that's the first step," Jacoby added.

Training without a goal

For a while, there was no guarantee that that dream could even come true this year for the now-18-year-old Olympic champion.

Due to the Omicron variant of Covid-19, swimming's world governing body FINA was forced to reschedule this summer's planned World Championships that had been slated to take place in Fukuoka, Japan.

"I was kind of freaking out," Jacoby said to SwimSwam. "I was having trouble training, I was having trouble doing a lot of things because I just couldn't stop thinking about, like, I don't know what…

"It's hard to train when you don't know what you're supposed to be doing in training leading into these meets."

However, those fears have since been put to rest, after FINA announced that there will be an extraordinary FINA World Championships this summer.

Budapest, Hungary, which hosted a delayed European Swimming Championships in May 2021 and last hosted the Worlds in 2017, stepped forward as a host city for the 2022 FINA World Championships, with Fukuoka hosting in 2023.

"To have that schedule put together feels so good and I'm super excited for Worlds – it'll be super fun in Budapest," Jacoby said.

So how will she approach gearing up for Budapest, now that she knows it's happening?

"The end goal which I'm kind of training for over the next several years is obviously Paris [2024]," the teenager – who will still only be 20 when the next Olympic Games take place in the French capital – acknowledged.

"I'm really going to be working on, at Worlds this summer, kind of going into that similarly to how I want to go into Paris in 2024," she added.

World record chase?

Jacoby's progression in the 100m breaststroke has been impressive. No one thought she would be competing at the very top this soon.

In fact, Jacoby only went under the 1 minute 7 second mark in April last year – barely four months before the Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Now, she's a bona fide threat to take King's mark, which currently stands at 1:04.13.

"The summer I was 15 (in 2019), I was going at 1:08 [in the] 100 breaststroke," Jacoby remembered.

"At 17 two years later, I was at a 1:04 (in Tokyo, where she won gold in 1:04.95). So I feel like the way I'm training and the way that I'm setting myself up to keep competing, I don't see why I can't keep dropping [time] like I have been," she remarked with a laugh. "So, I'm excited."

Not an outright declaration of intent, but there's little reason to believe that the world record isn't within Jacoby's sights.

Graduation

It's easy to forget that Jacoby is still a teenager – a high schooler, at that, ready to graduate in the coming months in Seward, a coastal city located two-and-a-half hours' drive south of the state's largest city Anchorage.

"I definitely had a bit harder of a time motivating [myself] for school and stuff than I had in the past," Jacoby reflected on her life after returning to the United States' northwestern-most state following the Tokyo Games.

"This last semester was [tough] because, like, now I have an agent and I want to be doing that stuff because it's kind of fun, and I want to be travelling to Europe and travelling to the Middle East and doing all this stuff."

But her education, eventually, took precedence. "Eventually [it was] like, 'oh, class is kinda boring but I guess I have to prioritise that'. Just figuring out how to balance my life that I need to be maintaining as a kid who's in high school and then learning how to kind of build my career."

Once graduation is done, Jacoby will be able to focus on her goals in the pool once more, before commencing her collegiate career with the Texas Longhorns.

Lydia Jacoby's World Cup and World Championships schedule

So what's on her swimming radar, calendar-wise?

Since Tokyo, Jacoby has competed in the FINA Swimming World Cup series, finishing 13th in the 2021 individual rankings from four meets in October 2021 – including a stop in Budapest.

She also competed in the 50m breaststroke and 4x50m medley relay at the World Swimming Championships (short-course) in December.

For now, Jacoby is focused on USA Swimming's national Pro Swim Series ahead of the FINA World Championships, with swimming events set to take place from 18 to 25 June in Hungary.

The women's 100m breaststroke is scheduled for 19 June 2022 and the 200m on 22 June, with the non-Olympic 50m on 24 June (heats) and 25 June (final). The women's medley relay also takes place on the final day of swimming events.