07.30.21

Sullivan Honors Lydia Jacoby as “Alaskan of the Week,” Part Two


WASHINGTON—On the floor of the U.S. Senate yesterday, Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) recognized Lydia Jacoby, the seventeen-year-old swimmer from Seward, Alaska who stunned the world earlier this week when she won the gold medal at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games in the women’s 100-meter breastroke. Jacoby was previously recognized as part of Senator Sullivan’s series, “Alaskan of the Week,” on June 26 after she became the first Alaskan swimmer ever to qualify to compete at the Olympics.

 

It was the first time in the history of Senator Sullivan’s series that an Alaskan has been recognized twice. Many Hill reporters took note, including NBC reporter Frank Thorp, who tweeted: “NEWS: In historic first: @SenDanSullivan has officially named #Olympics gold medal winning Alaskan swimmer Lydia Jacoby as the first-ever two-time ‘Alaskan of the Week.’”



TRIBUTE TO LYDIA JACOBY

 

Madam President, it is Thursday. It is my favorite time of the week. I get to come down on the Senate floor and talk about someone who has made an impact on their community, maybe the State, maybe the country, and, occasionally, the world. That is what I call our Alaskan of the Week.

 

Now, this is going to be a little bit of a historic “Alaskan of the Week.” I have been doing this, gosh, going on 6 years almost, and while this is a historic moment, because we have never made someone an Alaskan of the Week twice--it has never happened. We are making Senate history right now. But you might know that we had a historic week in the Olympics because our Alaskan of the Week a month ago, whom we talked about here on the Senate floor, Lydia Jacoby, when she made the Olympic team, she won Gold. And for anyone who saw that race, that 100-meter breaststroke race a couple of nights ago, you will probably never forget it. We certainly are not going to forget it.

 

And I guarantee you, Lydia's hometown of Seward, AK--a beautiful, incredible town of 3,000 people, wonderful people--they are not going to forget it.

 

So history is right here on the Senate floor. Lydia Jacoby, gold medalist--as the Washington Post called it in a headline, “an Alaskan Stunner”--is our Alaskan of the Week for the second time.

 

You know, I always talk a little bit about Alaska before I do my “Alaskan of the Week” speech. A lot of people, particularly at this point in the summer, when they are visiting, are curious about the light: if the Sun ever sets in the summer, when it rises. So what I always try to do is tell people: Come on up and see for yourself. We would love to have you. We are having a beautiful summer.

 

I will give you a hint. Right now in Seward, AK--that is the home of our Gold medal Olympian athlete, Lydia--the Sun will rise today at 5:32 a.m. and set around 10:35. We lost about 5 minutes from yesterday. But if you are still thinking about coming up to Alaska for a summer trip, come on and do it. There is still lots of Sun.

 

There is tons of excitement across my State, and there is tons of excitement across Alaska, in Seward and everywhere else, because of this incredible young 17-year-old. And if you saw it on TV, Seward, AK, Monday night was probably the site of the best Olympic watch party ever--I hope people saw that--ever.

 

So I talked about Lydia about a month ago when she cinched her spot on the team, and she did that by actually swimming the second fastest time in the world in the women's 100-meter breaststroke finals in the Olympic trials for the United States. So we, in Alaska, knew she was something.

 

I will mention this again: Alaskans, we punch above our weight in the Winter Olympics. We do really well in the Winter Olympics, for reasons that most people probably understand, and we have done pretty well in the Summer Olympics, particularly in trapshooting, riflery. We have an Olympic veteran rugby player right now. Alev Kelter from Eagle River is also competing. Her team made the Olympic quarterfinals. She might be on the field later tonight, so good luck to her. We are going to be rooting for her as well.

 

But Alaska has never sent a swimmer to the Olympics, ever, let alone won a gold. As the NBC announcer said after the race, Alaska “is not exactly your hotbed of swimming in America.”

 

Someone else pointed out that Alaska is dead last in the United States in terms of swimming pools per mile by far. We don't have a lot of swimming pools. And, as a matter of fact, Lydia's story is even more impressive because there is only one Olympic-sized pool in the whole State of Alaska, and that is in Anchorage, a 2\1/2\-hour drive from Seward, her hometown.

 

So I will just reiterate a little bit more about this remarkable young woman and her dedicated mom and dad who raised her. Her parents, Leslie and Richard, are both boat captains. Leslie is the educational coordinator for the Marine Science Explorer Program at Kenai Fjords Tours, and Rich is a maritime instructor at the Alaska Vocational Technical Center--AVTEC, as we call it--and he also is a guide for Arctic and Antarctic trips.

 

They raised their daughter Lydia in Seward, signed her up for swim classes when she was a toddler. Good job, Mom and Dad. She joined the swim club when she was just 6 years old. When she was 10, she was selected for the Alaska Swimming Zone Team. State qualifying meets allowed her to go on trips.

 

In between all of this, she was and continues to be a musician, learning to play the guitar and upright bass. She sings. She plays at folk festivals. Her band is the Snow River String Band. She was also in theater and in track. She likes to write, take pictures, and explore tidal basins. This is just a good, all-American teenager in Alaska.

 

And, of course, she excelled in swimming. Her parents continued to be, in their words, surprised and amazed and, of course, so proud.

 

One of her coaches, Solomon D'Amico, described her as “kind, quiet, and yet confident” and said that Lydia had an “intense fire,” one that you might not see immediately in her. But neither her parents nor her coach pushed her too hard. They wanted the drive to come from her, and it certainly did.

 

On Monday night, when this historic race started, the NBC announcers were focused mostly on the reigning Olympic champion and world record holder, American Lilly King, as well as the newly minted Olympic record holder, Tatjana Schoenmaker of South Africa. In the announcers' minds, that is where the competition was.

 

But we knew better, especially in Seward, AK, where about 400 people gathered for the race. All eyes were on Lydia. They knew all along she could do it.

 

In Tokyo, the NBC announcers started to notice the underdog. And if you haven't watched the race, go to YouTube. It is so exciting. And they saw her starting to pull ahead in the final seconds. You could hear the announcers getting excited. They said:

 

Then you've got Jacoby, lane 3, challenging Schoenmaker. Watch Jacoby. Lydia Jacoby, the 17-year-old from Alaska, is putting on the surge of her career.

 

Watch it. It is so exciting. And, of course, she did. Now, there is a video of everybody watching in Seward, which quickly went viral, of Lydia's friends and classmates and neighbors jumping up and down, stomping the floor, when the announcer yelled, “Alaska has an Olympic Gold Medalist. Oh, my gosh.”

 

The place went nuts.

 

Anyone watching, if you want to get Olympic joy, go on the website and look at the Twitter video that the Olympics put up. It is a split-screen shot of the race at the top and the great fans in Seward, AK, cheering. And when she wins, watch what happens. It is priceless. It is Olympic joy at its best.

 

Lydia's parents, Rich and Leslie, were in Florida, where NBC and the Olympic Committee had set up a watch party for families of the athletes. They, too, knew that she had it in her to win the gold. Her dad said: “When she hit the wall at the turn, we knew she was right in there. She likes to run [people down]” in her races.

 

On television, the joy and the pride of her parents was also priceless. They are still filled with excitement and pride and, let's face it, a little bit of shellshock. And they are so grateful for the outpouring of support from Alaskans and, let's face it, Americans across the country.

 

“It's true,” Rich said, “about Alaska being the biggest small town in the world.” Rich said that Lydia is doing great; she is happy, tired, a bit overwhelmed. We don't know yet. She might be competing in an upcoming relay race, which she is super excited about. We will see if that happens.

 

As for what is next, her dad said Lydia is going to continue her life of being a normal teenager; participate in high school sports, no doubt, continue to play music; and she is still planning on attending the University of Texas in the fall, a normal teenager but who has touched so many lives across Alaska, particularly Seward, but across the country--really, across the globe.

 

As one Washington Post columnist put it on Lydia's win, “There are moments at [the] Olympics that redefine a town. And there are moments at [the] Olympics that make you say: `That's why I watch [the Olympics]. That's why I came. That's what [the Olympics is] all about.”'

 

And I think we all saw that when we watched this race. We saw that, including the two other competitors who won the silver and bronze, Lilly King and Tatjana Schoenmaker, who came over to Lydia and were so gracious, hugging her, joyful.

 

So I want to thank them. I want to thank Lydia's coaches, including Solomon, who put so much training and dedicated so much time and effort to her skills; and, of course, to her mom and dad for their very hard work, early morning practices, raising an exceptional daughter; to the competitors; really, everybody.

 

And, of course, to Lydia: Great job on your hard work, dedication, grit, determination. Throughout the years, so many people--throughout the decades, so many people have dreamed of finding gold in Alaska, and you are an Alaskan who found gold in a way that has inspired and overjoyed not just your community of Seward, not just our State, but literally our country and the world.

 

So, Lydia, congrats on the gold medal; congratulations on your win; and congratulations, for the first time in Senate history, on being the only person ever to be our Alaskan of the Week two times. Great job!

 

# # #