Jessica Fox, fluent in both English and French and now flag bearer for Australia at the Paris Olympics, also carries the legacy of the family saving white water paddling's place in the Olympics.
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It will be her fourth Games, with a gold, a silver and two bronze medals already in her keeping, as well as membership to the Marseille kayaking association since she was born thanks to her grandfather.
She grew up half a world away, in Penrith, the western Sydney international outpost which rescued the white water sport from Olympic extinction back in 1998.
Back then, the Australian Olympic Committee had planned to axe the event from the Games schedule due to a lack of funding and facilities available.
This is where her father Richard Fox, a British Olympic representative and then vice-president of the International Canoe Federation, who won five individual world championships and finished fourth in Barcelona in 1992, steps in.
Jessica was just six when Fox and wife Myriam Fox-Jerusalmi, who won bronze for France in the K1 race in Atlanta in 1996, came to Australia, launching a worldwide fundraising to ensure a viable future, leading to the Penrith White Water Stadium, the Sydney 2000 Olympics venue.
"That's why we ended up in Australia," Fox-Jerusalmi told ACM of their battle to keep slalom in the Olympics back in London in 2012, when Jessica won silver at her first Games.
"It was our first Olympics with the team in Sydney.
"It was long before [Jessica] came into the picture [competitively]."
Jessica is now an Olympics icon, winning the inaugural C1 race in Tokyo in the COVID-delayed Games in 2021, to add to the K1 silver and bronze and multiple world championships.
The Fox family raised millions.
"We moved to Australia in '98 for the Olympic Games in 2000 and stayed ever since," she said in 2012.
"I guess I'm very lucky to be from Australia.
"I could have been [competing] for France or Great Britain, but Australia is my home now.
"Both my parents competing in the Olympic Games is something pretty special and [it] definitely inspired me to get to this position. Winning a medal is something that you dream and I'm proud to follow in [my mother's] footsteps."
To outsiders, picking Fox and Australia's male flagbearer and Kookaburras' five-time Olympian Eddie Ockenden was a no-brainer for the team's chef de mission Anna Meares - but she said it was not easy, given the strength of the Australian team.
"They might feel a little bit overwhelmed, they might not be able to find the words right now or really appreciate right now the significance of it, but I know it's not going to change who they are or how they operate," Meares said.
"I couldn't find better examples to lead this team."
And for their part, Fox and Ockenden are pumped about what the Australian team will deliver in Paris.
"We're ready - we're ready to create our own legacy," Fox said. with AAP
Tim Barrow
When it comes to sport - at professional and community level - in the Illawarra, I'm here to provide insight, context and opinion, as well as the latest news you won't find anywhere else.
When it comes to sport - at professional and community level - in the Illawarra, I'm here to provide insight, context and opinion, as well as the latest news you won't find anywhere else.
