Paris Olympics see Indy’s Sarah Bacon and Kassidy Cook win silver

PARIS − Not making the U.S. Olympic team in 2024 worked out well for diver Sarah Bacon.

If Bacon, 27, had made the 2020 team, the Indianapolis native would have retired from the sport. Instead, she and partner Kassidy Cook, 29, stuck together all the way to the medal ceremony in Paris. The American duo won silver in the 3-meter synchronized springboard event Saturday at the Aquatics Center, giving Team USA its first medals of the Paris Games.

Chang Yani and Chen Yiwen of China won gold, and Yasmin Harper and Scarlett Mew Jensen of Great Britain took bronze as the Australian team of Maddison Keeney and Anabelle Smith, who were within striking distance of Bacon and Cook, botched the final dive and dropped to fifth.

This was Bacon’s Olympic debut and the first medal for the U.S. team in the women’s synchronized jumping event since Kelci Bryant and Abby Johnston won silver in London in 2012.

Bacon, who is also competing in the individual springboard at the Paris Games, is from Indianapolis and competed at the University of Minnesota. Cook is from The Woodlands, Texas, and attended Stanford. This was her second Olympic appearance.

More: ‘What if I give diving another try?’ Sarah Bacon’s long journey forces Olympics to be halted.

Cook and Bacon finished second at the 2021 U.S. Olympic Trials, missing out on a ticket to Tokyo. Cook was competing with what she called a “pretty nasty shoulder injury.”

“I wasn’t focused on my competition,” Cook said earlier this week in Paris. “I was focused on my pain. It left a bitter taste in my mouth.”

Bacon originally wanted to retire from diving after the Tokyo Olympics.

“There were other things that got in the way of us getting on that team,” she said before Saturday’s competition, “and that was pretty devastating. … Not making the team kept me diving, and now I’m an Olympian.”

Since the women’s synchronized diving competition was introduced in 2000, six of the seven gold medals have been won by Chinese tandems. China has won every Olympic gold medal in women’s diving since 2004.

Team USA has been a world power in diving for decades. The U.S. team has not had an Olympic gold medalist in the sport since David Boudia (men) in 2012.