The 2020s will spotlight French-American sports ties and influences as the sports world turns to France ahead of Rugby World Cup 2023 and the Paris 2024 Games before crossing to North America for the FIFA World Cup 2026 and Los Angeles Games 2028.
Writers, artists, jazz musicians, dancers, fashion icons, and rock stars have long fostered people-to-people cultural exchanges, but today it’s athletes, coaches, and others in and around the sports world who bridge divides and help better inform French and American citizens about each other.
Yet few know of the many French-American ties, from the basketball worlds of the WNBA, NBA, ProA, ProB, and LFB and football soccer leagues like NWSL, MLS, and D1 Arkema to the realm of alpine skiing, tennis, horse racing, NCAA programs, and more.
#FranceAndUS aims to change this by highlighting French and American sports voices through the sports diplomacy prism, building into the 250th anniversary of the Franco-American diplomatic alliance in 2028 and the Los Angeles Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Inspirations
Myron T. Herrick in 1923, U.S. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.
1️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ years ago, a new era of Franco-American cultural relations was inaugurated when Myron T. Herrick presented his credentials as U.S. Ambassador to France on July 15, 1921. Herrick was beloved by the French*, a francophile who grew up on a farm reading Victor Hugo. From 1921 until his death in-office in March 1929, he presided over a renaissance of informal people-to-people exchanges through music, art, literature, tourism, aviation—making the “other” a little less foreign.
Herrick was not a renowned sportsman, but during the 1️⃣9️⃣2️⃣0️⃣s sports began to democratize, popularize and evolve, laying the foundations for today’s global sports world. A century on, his encouragement of closer cultural ties lives on in the build-up to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic & Paralympic Games, which will also mark 250 years of the Franco-American diplomatic alliance.
* During his first tour as U.S. Ambassador to France in September 1914, Herrick famously pledged to remain to protect the capital and its people from plunder and massacre by the advancing German army. For more on Herrick’s First World War work in France, see Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, “Views From the Embassy: The Role of the U.S. Diplomatic Community in France, 1914,” U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian, September 2014.
Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff
Director, #FranceAndUS
Lindsay is a sports diplomacy expert, consultant, writer, and historian who works at the intersection of sports, communications, and diplomacy.
Co-director of the Basketball Diplomacy in Africa Project, author of The Making of Les Bleus: Sport in France 1958-2010, “Views From the Embassy,” and a contributing writer on global sports for CNN International, Washington Post, The Athletic, VICE Sports, Sporting News, The New Yorker, and more, she is a veteran of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Public Affairs, Office of the Historian.
Lindsay is a Research Associate at the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy (SOAS University of London), and an adjunct lecturer with NYU’s Tisch Institute for Global Sport.
Contact Lindsay for more information or to discuss how you / your organization can become involved with #FranceAndUS.