By the time Lydia Jacoby dove into a pool at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre in the summer of 2021, the first-time Olympian had long known who had her back. In Seward, Alaska, where the seventeen-year-old had lived her whole life, everybody knows everybody. And everybody supported Jacoby’s dreams.So the fact that hundreds of her friends and supporters gathered at a railroad terminal in Seward (population: roughly 2,700) to watch the hundred-meter breaststroke final wasn’t out of the ordinary. What was unusual was her surprise win in a shade under 1 minute and 5 seconds (1:04.95, to be exact), which sent the crowd jumping up and down and up and down, higher and faster once she tapped the wall. Some of those following from the forty-ninth…
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