Alaskan 17-year-old Lydia Jacoby wins gold in 100 breaststroke

Lydia Jacoby didn’t know what to do.

The 17-year-old touched the pool wall, turned to check the scoreboard and a stunned look filled her face.

Thundersticks clapped, vuvuzelas screeched and the handful of people allowed inside the Tokyo Aquatics Centre on Tuesday shouted loudly enough to make the 15,000-seat building feel, at least for a moment, like it wasn’t mostly empty.

The first gold medal at the Summer Games for the powerful U.S. women’s swim team didn’t come from a big name or world-record holder, but from an Alaska native who will be a high school senior this fall and is the first Olympic swimmer in the state’s history.

Jacoby pulled away in the final meters of the 100-meter breaststroke to edge South Africa’s Tatjana Schoenmaker, who finished second, and Lilly King, the defending Olympic gold medalist and world-record holder, in one of the biggest surprises in the swimming competition at the Games.

“I knew I had it in me, but I wasn’t really expecting a gold medal,” Jacoby said. “When I looked up at the scoreboard, it was insane.”

King had followed her victory in the event at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016 — which included plenty of verbal sparring with Russia’s Yulia Efimova over a past doping suspension — with world championship titles in 2017 and 2019.

But Schoenmaker, better known for her ability in the 200 breaststroke, beat King and broke her Olympic record during the semifinals Monday. It was King’s first defeat in the event since 2015. That kind of setback usually pushes her to do something remarkable.