🤺0️⃣3️⃣3️⃣ Justin Tausig
Meet Justin Tausig, a sports and performance psychologist and former six-time member of the U.S. Senior National Team who cut his teeth in the world of elite fencing in Paris at the Racing Club de France.
⚽0️⃣3️⃣2️⃣ Hakim Zermouni
Meet Hakim Zermouni, whose informal sports diplomacy experience demonstrated the power of sport through football.
🎾0️⃣3️⃣1️⃣ Helen Hull Jacobs
Meet Helen Hull Jacobs, a U.S. tennis player, three-time French Championship finalist, and on-court fashion pioneer who, through the “Battle of the Helens,” helped forge one of the sport’s first fierce rivalries.
🏀0️⃣3️⃣0️⃣ Bob Riley
Meet Bob Riley, the former Atlanta Hawk who helped enrich the French game and national team as one of the first U.S.-born naturalized Frenchmen to play for Les Bleus in the 1970s.
⚽🗞️029 Jonathan Johnson
Meet Jonathan Johnson, a French football specialist who helps translate the hexagone’s football, stars, tacticians, and culture to American audiences.
🏀0️⃣2️⃣8️⃣ Bill Cain
Meet Bill Cain, the New York native who translated his NCAA student-athlete activist experience into a role as a sports ambassador for the United States, France, and Les Bleus in basketball.
🏀0️⃣2️⃣7️⃣ Tariq Abdul-Wahad
Meet Tariq Abdul-Wahad, the basketballer who, following an NCAA career with the University of Michigan and San Jose State, was the first Frenchman to play in the NBA in 1997.
🏀🗞0️⃣2️⃣6️⃣ Arnaud Lecomte
Meet Arnaud Lecomte, a basketball journalist for L’Équipe who has covered and translated the NBA for French audiences since 1992.
🎾0️⃣2️⃣5️⃣ Suzanne Lenglen
Meet Suzanne Lenglen, the trailblazing albeit at times controversial tennis player who as one of the first international sports stars helped revolutionize the game and sporting fashions in Europe and the United States in the 1920s and 1930s.
⚽️0️⃣2️⃣4️⃣ Arianna Criscione
Meet Arianna Criscione, a football industry professional and former pro player advancing women’s football on both sides of the Atlantic.
⚽️0️⃣2️⃣3️⃣ Laura Georges
Meet Laura Georges, Secretary-General of the French Football Federation (FFF) and former international and professional footballer who was one of the first French women to play NCAA D1 football in 2004.
🎾0️⃣2️⃣2️⃣ Mary K. Browne
Meet Mary Kendall Browne, a pioneering professional tennis player nicknamed “Brownie,” who in 1926 became the first American woman to contest the French women’s championship title–today’s Roland Garros tournament.
🏀0️⃣2️⃣1️⃣ Isabelle Fijalkowski
Meet Isabelle Fijalkowski, the 2001 European Champion and 1999 Vice European Champion who in 1997 was one of the first Frenchwomen to play in the WNBA.
⚽️0️⃣2️⃣0️⃣ Frédéric Lipka
Meet Frédéric Lipka, a soccer tactician who is helping Major League Soccer reengineer its youth development.
🏀🔍0️⃣1️⃣9️⃣ Jon Pastuszek
Meet Jon Pastuszek, an international basketball scout helping to identify the next wave of players looking to realize their hoops dreams in the NBA.
🏀0️⃣1️⃣8️⃣ Rémy Raisner
Meet Rémy Raisner, a Franco-American NCAA player who helped colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic better understand the “other” through basketball.
🏀📺0️⃣1️⃣7️⃣ Johan Rat
Meet Johan Rat, a basketball coach, television analyst, and former NCAA D1 player who helped bring NCAA March Madness to French living rooms.
🎿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.
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.