Kassidy Cook will make her return to the Olympics, while NCAA and national champion Sarah Bacon will join her for the first time.
The duo earned spots on the 2024 U.S. Olympic Team with a victory in women’s synchronized 3-meter Monday at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials.
Cook and Bacon were the first two divers to punch their tickets to Paris as they scored 629.82 points on two lists of women’s synchronized 3-meter dives on the opening day of trials.
“It was that moment when all your hard work comes to fruition. Sometimes that doesn’t always happen. You don’t always get the result you want, and that’s happened to us before,” Cook told USA Diving. “Once we landed in the water, we knew we landed in the water as Olympians and that we were going to Paris. We were just overwhelmed with emotion.
“It feels amazing. We have been working so hard for so long and given a lot of sacrifices and gone through so much as a team. To finally say that we made the Olympics together, that we’re going to Paris, honestly doesn’t feel real yet, but I’m over the moon.”
For Bacon, she just missed making the Tokyo team, along with Cook. Cook made the 2016 Olympics in Rio and is now the first female diver to make non-consecutive Olympic teams for the U.S.
“We faced a lot of obstacles over the last couple of months together, years honestly. Injuries and all that kind of stuff, so just coming through all of that and making my first Olympic team and her second Olympic team, I don’t have any words right now for it,” Bacon told USA Diving. “The last Olympics were bittersweet. It was over COVID, and I was one of the favorites to make that team, I would say in both synchro and individual. It just lit a fire underneath me. Honestly, I was planning on retiring after that Olympics, so it kept me diving. I wanted to make an Olympic team.”
The duo closed out the finals with 70.20 points on their last dive, a front 2 ½ somersaults with one twist. When they hit the water, they knew they had clinched a spot on the team.