🎿0️⃣1️⃣6️⃣ Donna Weinbrecht
Meet Donna Weinbrecht, the three-time Olympian and five-time World Cup Championship titan who won the historic first gold medal in freestyle moguls at the 1992 Albertville Games.
🏈🏉0️⃣1️⃣5️⃣ Richard Tardits
Meet Richard Tardits, a rugby player from Bayonne who following a storied career with the University of Georgia became the first French player in the National Football League (NFL).
🏀0️⃣1️⃣4️⃣ Michel Rat
Meet Michel Rat, a basketball player, coach, and administrator who helped translate U.S. style basketball techniques to generations of French players from 1962 to today.
🥇🥈🥉0️⃣1️⃣3️⃣ Pierre de Coubertin
Meet Pierre de Coubertin, the French aristocrat who founded the modern Olympic movement and was influenced in part by the sports culture he observed during his 1889 and 1893 trips to the United States.
🎽0️⃣1️⃣2️⃣ DeHart Hubbard
Meet DeHart Hubbard, the first U.S. Black athlete to win a gold medal in an individual event at the 1924 Paris Olympics.
🏀0️⃣1️⃣1️⃣ Martin Feinberg
Meet Martin Feinberg, the player and coach who was one of the first Americans to mark French basketball in the 1950s.
🏀0️⃣1️⃣0️⃣ Paoline Ekambi
Meet Paoline Ekambi, the 1993 European Vice-Champion and first French female to play NCAA Division 1 basketball in 1984.
🏀0️⃣0️⃣9️⃣ Diandra Tchatchouang
Meet Diandra Tchatchouang, the Olympic-medal winning activist whose time playing NCAA basketball influenced her on-court game and off-court work back home.
🏀0️⃣0️⃣8️⃣ Katia Foucade-Hoard
Meet Katia Foucade-Hoard, the 1993 European Vice-Champion and first French woman to play four years of NCAA D1 basketball on scholarship.
🏀0️⃣0️⃣7️⃣ Gabby Williams
Meet Gabby Williams, the Franco-American WNBA veteran whose polyvalent hoops abilities helped Les Bleues win EuroBasket 2021 silver and Tokyo 2020 Olympic bronze medals.
⛳0️⃣0️⃣6️⃣ Margaret Ives Abbott
Meet Margaret Abbott, the first American woman to win an Olympic event in the golf competition at the Paris Olympics of 1900.
🏉🎩0️⃣0️⃣5️⃣ George H. Jackson
Meet George H. Jackson, the U.S. consul who helped lay La Rochelle’s rugby foundations in the early twentieth century.
🎾🎩0️⃣0️⃣4️⃣ JJ Jusserand
Meet JJ Jusserand, the French Ambassador to the United States who strengthened Franco-American relations as part of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s famed “Tennis Cabinet” in the early 20th century.
🎾0️⃣0️⃣3️⃣ Helen Wills
Meet Helen Wills, a groundbreaking tennis champion who famously “let my racquet do the talking” as she smashed records to become the first internationally-known American female sports celebrity in the 1920s.
🏉🎩0️⃣0️⃣2️⃣ William H. Hunt
Meet William H. Hunt, the U.S. Consul at St. Étienne from 1907 until 1927 who became a founding figure of the city’s rugby scene.
🏀0️⃣0️⃣1️⃣ Melvin Rideout
Meet Melvin Rideout, a basketball pioneer who introduced the game to France (and England).
Mapping the Connections
The connections highlighted by #FranceAndUS Voices over time.
Blue = From the United States to France. Red = From France to the United States.