Paris Olympics: Sarah Bacon, Kassidy Cook Claim Synchro Silver for First U.S. Medal

Photo Courtesy: Andrea Staccioli/Deepbluemedia/Insidefoto

Paris Olympics: Sarah Bacon, Kassidy Cook Claim Synchro Silver for First U.S. Medal

The first American medal of the 2024 Paris Olympics belongs to Sarah Bacon and Kassidy Cook.

The U.S. 3-meter women’s synchro pair kicked off Paris with silver in the event at the Paris Aquatics Centre, the first medal for Team USA at the 2024 Olympics.

Bacon and Cook finished 23.04 points behind the winning Chinese pair of Chang Yani and Chen Yiwen. Great Britain was third.

It’s the first Olympic medal for both Cook, 29, and Bacon, 27. Bacon has a pair of silver medals from World Championships in 2019 and 2022 in the individual events. Cook finished 13th on women’s 3-meter individual at the 2016 Olympics.

“We were really consistent,” Cook said. “We were able to dive the way we train. It wasn’t our best performance but we didn’t miss anything, so we’re really happy with how we did. To be able to walk away with a silver medal is freaking awesome.”

The Chinese pair dominated, with the best score in each of the five rounds to tally 337.68 points. Bacon and Cook tied them with the best dive of the second round, scoring 51.00 on their 301B. The Americans then posted the third-best dive of the third, fourth and fifth rounds, each topping 70 points. It led to a score of 314.64.

Sarah Bacon and Kassidy Cook look good in silver 😎#ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/v3ijiPyG8y

— On Her Turf (@OnHerTurf) July 27, 2024

That consistency saw them outduel the up-and-down British duo of Yasmin Harper and Scarlett Mew Jensen. Cook and Bacon gained six points in the third round, when the Brits had just the sixth-best dive to fall to sixth. Harper and Mew Jensen delivered the second-best dive of the final round to leap over Australia and into bronze. Britain tallied 302.28, with Italy fourth in 293.52. The Aussie pair of Anabelle Smith and Maddison Keeney, which won silver at the Doha World Championships this year, fell to fifth, scoring just 48.60 on their final dive.

“I’ve got no words. I can’t even speak,” Mew Jensen. “I was massively in shock. That’s a really easy dive for them, they are very talented. For that to happen, I don’t want to say it couldn’t have happened better, but for us, that was the ideal. To find joy out of someone else’s failure is really hard, but also, for us, it is really powerful.”

It’s the first Olympic medal for Chen, age 25. She has six golds at World Championships and seven total medals. That includes three straight synchro titles with Chang, 22, also a first-time medalist. She has five golds and seven total Worlds medals.

“We didn’t put too much pressure on our shoulders,” Chen said. “There is some stress but we identified the difficulties upstream. Most important is to keep working together and keep encouraging each other.”

For Cook and Bacon, it’s a culmination of a longstanding friendship even more than partnership. Bacon recalled watching the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics together in Texas. Before they became synchro partners, they were friends, and Saturday’s medal is a celebration of both dimensions of that bond.

“We just had a connection ever since we were young and it has just transferred into our synchro,” Bacon said. “We’re best friends and we enjoy doing it together.”

“We have a special connection in the pool and outside of the pool and that has been a major component of how successful we are as a synchro team,” Cook said.

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