Bartlett High School in Anchorage, Alaska is looking for patrons.

Anyone who feels called to help the school get new starting blocks can find the internet fundraising campaign via the trustworthy search service.

In any case, the starting blocks of Bartlett High date from the 1980s and are now in disrepair, as stated in the aforementioned appeal for donations.

Christoph Becker

Sports editor.

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And they are, now we come to the unique selling point, in the swimming pool. The only indoor swimming pool in large, wide Alaska that has a 50-meter lane. Which is a little less surprising than it sounds, as school pools in the United States are largely measured according to the unit of length customary there and therefore end at 25 or 50 yards. Not bad, the training is over sooner. Unless, and now it's getting interesting for the fundraising campaign, you already have Olympic ambitions as a high school student. Then a swimming pool of an Olympic size or a continental European meter measure will do quite well. For example for Lydia Jacoby from the small town Seward on the north beach of Resurrection Bay.

Because Lydia Jacoby, now 17 years old, had ambitions at a young age, great Olympic ambitions and great luck, she drove from Seward to Bartlett High on Golden Bear Drive in Anchorage, to the swimming pool with the ailing starting blocks, for training. 130 miles there, 130 miles back. Two and a half hours one way. Great luck, as I said, 130 miles is no way, Alaska is big, bigger than some Olympic ambitions at any rate. And what does Lydia Jacoby get from her luck and her ambitions?

An Olympic gold medal. On Tuesday, the first female swimmer from Alaska to ever swim in an Olympic final stunned all opponents over 100 meters chest. The favorite Lilly King from Evansville, Indiana, Olympic champion of Rio de Janeiro 2016, world champion 2017 and 2019. Tatjana Schoenmaker from Johannesburg, South Africa, who all considered King's great challenger and who actually stayed ahead of her: but only won the silver medal, because Lydia Jacoby swam even faster from the north end of Resurrection Bay.

There, in Seward, where Tuesday had not yet begun when Lydia Jacoby became Olympic champion, but a summer evening in the northern latitudes did not get dark, the local teenagers saw the race on a screen. And freaked out. A video tweeted through the Alaska News Source account shows a pretty bouncing, pretty screaming crowd of students who sounded like they were watching a high school competition, like a 50- Yards pool.

Lydia Jacoby has been the most successful swimmer of a whole wave of teenagers romping through the water in Tokyo since Tuesday. There is 14-year-old Canadian Summer McIntosh, fourth in the 400-meter freestyle, 16-year-old Romanian David Popovici, fourth in the 200-meter freestyle, there are quite a few more. Lilly King and Tatjana Schoenmaker, for example, seem downright old. Both were - born before the turn of the millennium, now 24.

"I've swum in competitions since I was, roughly, ss-s-six," said Olympic champion Jacoby, when asked about her swimming vita, and it sounded like it was really, really long ago. It's all a question of definition. It was 2010 when Jacoby first started for the swimming club her parents put her in. "We have a sailboat, they wanted me to be safe in the water." The water is deep in Resurrection Bay. At around twelve she set a national record for the first time. Since, it must have been in 2016, she somehow realized that swimming is something “where I stand out and that I want to keep doing it”. What also happened in 2016: She saw Lilly King become Olympic champion. “She was my role model. In Rio, uh, I was twelve. I was really little.I watched her. ”And then it went on.

The Jacoby family had plans, travel plans, for Tokyo. She wanted to go to the 2020 Games. Because the daughter wanted to see what it's like at the Olympics. As a spectator. “I wanted to start in the trials, but I knew that I wouldn't have a chance to get into the team.” And then came the pandemic. And the rejection. And the car trips to Golden Bear Drive, to the pool with the ailing starting blocks.

And as it is in the life of a teenager, a year passed quickly and the world was completely different. Still a pandemic, but with the Olympics. And with Lydia Jacoby in Tokyo. Not as a tourist, but as a team. Olympic champion at 17. When she comes home, she'll have another year of high school. Then Lydia Jacoby moves away from Alaska to college. In a state where, of course, that too is a matter of opinion, but in your case clearly everything is a size smaller. Lydia Jacoby goes to Texas.