Tennis Superstar Coco Gauff & LeBron James Will Be Flag Bearers for Team USA

Other countries can and will beat Team USA throughout the Summer Olympics in Paris in various events.

One place Team USA will be impossible to beat will be in the category of famous flag bearers, where tennis superstar Coco Gauff and four-time NBA Most Valuable Player LeBron James will lead the way for the American contingent in the opening ceremonies.

The opening ceremony for the Olympics will take place on July 26 along the River Seine, with one male and one female athlete leading the contingent for each country — approximately 6,000 to 7,000 Olympians.

Gauff was announced as one of the two flag bearers on July 24, following the announcement of James as the other flag bearer the previous day.

Gauff Missed 2020 Olympics due to Covid-19

This will be the first Olympics for Gauff, a 20-year-old Georgia native, after she missed the 2020 Olympics because she tested positive for Covid-19 just days before the games were set to begin.

It’s not an overstatement to say Gauff is the future of women’s tennis. She won her first US Open singles title in 2023, becoming the first American teenager since Serena Williams in 1999 to win. She alsomade the finals of the French Open in 2024 and has already accumulated $15.3 million in career earnings on the tour.

While Gauff’s on-court earnings have made her very, very rich they pale in comparison to her off-court earnings — she was the highest-paid female athlete in the world in 2023 at $23 million.

With the 2024 Olympics, Gauff is also trying to follow in the footsteps of her Williams, who played on the same courts growing up in Delray Beach, Florida, that Gauff played on. Williams’ 23 Grand Slam singles titles are the most of the Open Era and she’s a four-time Olympic gold medalist with one singles gold medal, in 2012, and three doubles gold medals.

Team USA Flag Bearers of Olympics Past

While James will be the first men’s basketball player to serve as flag bearer for Team USA, he’s not the first basketball player to have the honor — Sue Bird was the flag bearer in 2020 and Dawn Staley was the flag bearer in 2004.

Gauff is the first tennis player, men’s or women’s, to be the flag bearer for Team USA and was informed of the honor by longtime friend and Team USA teammate Chris Eubanks in an emotional moment.

“I’m incredibly proud of Coco — I know how great she is as a tennis player, but more importantly, how great she is as a person,” Eubanks said.

A quick look at the historical list of flag bearers for the Americans is a Who’s Who of Olympic greats.

The Gauff-James pairing’s superstar power seems to have been a blueprint laid by the 2016 Olympic flag bearers, which feature gymnast Simone Biles and swimmer Michael Phelps, who holds the all-time Olympics record with 23 gold medals.

Other notable names to have carried the flag for Team USA have been women’s soccer star Mia Hamm (2004), wrestler Rulon Gardner (2000), figure skater Scott Hamilton (1980) and decathlete Rafer Johnson (1960), who also lit the cauldron to kick off the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.