Phoebe in Paris

Bacon’s Olympic coach warned her to prepare for “a lot of emotion. Good, bad, ugly.”

You don’t want to compete with Phoebe Bacon x’25 in an essay contest on the topic of “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.” Her trip to Paris, with 30 or so family members and friends, was probably more dramatic than anything you did. Bacon, a UW swimmer, competed in the Olympic Games, taking fourth place in the backstroke.

That means you probably wouldn’t want to compete against Bacon in swimming, either, unless you’re one of the three women on Earth who can swim the backstroke faster than she does. Bacon may have just missed the medal stand, but her career is on the rise.

Bacon grew up in the Washington, DC, area, and she came to UW–Madison for three reasons: “One was obviously the academics,” she says. “I would graduate with a really, really good degree. The second piece was the team. I felt right at home. And the third piece was head coach Yuri Suguiyama. I had a dream of being an Olympian, and I knew Yuri could get me there.”

Suguiyama has coached high-profile athletes, including Katie Ledecky and Ryan Murphy, both of whom have multiple Olympic gold medals. At the UW, he also coaches Bacon for her collegiate competitions — a season that runs from October through March. Bacon says that Olympic swimming presents a bigger emotional challenge, but Suguiyama prepared her for the drama.

“Yuri’s been a big help,” she says. “He will tell it to me straight. It’ll be like, ‘Phoebe, there’s going to be a lot of emotion. Good, bad, ugly. You will see it, and you will feel it all, and all we can try and do is manage it as best we can.’ Having that on my side streamlines my ability to be able to manage it.”

Bacon’s Paris race may have ended 0.04 seconds short of a medal, but her racing career is far from over, and she may try again in Los Angeles at the 2028 Olympics. But her first goal after Paris was just to try to relax and have a little summer vacation.

“I did a little sleeping,” she says. “I was hanging around with my family, being present, seeing them. My family means a lot to me, and spending time with them was super important. It’d been almost nine months since I’d been home.”