One of the more heartwarming, enduring images beamed to Australian television sets at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 was that of Jessica Fox, having just won C1 canoe slalom gold, being embraced by her mother and coach Myriam Fox-Jerusalmi, and her sister Noemie, on the water.
The culmination of a lifetime of work. The pressure after coming so close, but falling short in her favoured K1 event days earlier in which she won bronze. The relief and outpouring of emotion.
Her father Richard, meanwhile, was struggling to hide the emotions in the broadcast booth as he called his daughter home for the host broadcaster in Australia. It was a true family affair for Fox, who completed her Olympic set of bronze, silver, and gold medals with the win.
But Paris will be different again for family Fox. While Jess may have completed the Olympic set and will be flagbearer for Australia in her fourth Games in Paris, it's the family itself which is now its own 'Olympic set' after Noemie joined her sister in qualifying for the newly-introduced event, the Kayak Cross, a demanding, competitive, race-style event in which four competitors paddle simultaneously, and physical contact isn't off the table.
Richard, paddling for Great Britain, finished fourth in the K1 event at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, and Myriam was a K1 bronze medallist for France in Atlanta in 1996.
For Jess, it's a "a dream come true" to finally be able to tackle her sport's biggest stage with her sister, whom she described as her biggest rock.
"Seeing, projecting ourselves at the Games altogether, is a dream come true. Being able to do that with my sister, who has been a training partner, a competitor, my sister, best friend, but also she's been on the sidelines. She's been watching the Games, she's worked at the Games, she's been a volunteer, she's been a spectator -- she's done everything else except be the athlete at the games. So for her to qualify and be able to share that together, is going to be incredible," she told a media call prior to the Paris Olympics.
"I saw a post the other day by The Female Athlete Project. They did this collage. And it was, my dad competed at the '92 Olympics. My mum at '92 and '96, I've done a few, and now finally, Noemie joins the club in the family. So it is really beautiful to be able to celebrate that as a family."
Fox recalled the moment Noemie qualified, and the stress involved being a spectator, followed by the unbridled joy of watching years of hard work and dedication come to fruition in the form of a plane ticket to Paris.
"It was honestly probably up there with winning the Olympics," Jess said. "For me, it was one of the best days of my life. It was so challenging. I think it's such a massive build up for her to come into that race. There was only three quota spots available, for the Kayak Cross. A lot can happen. A lot can go wrong.
"I've never been so nervous being a spectator at that competition. Normally I'm also competing, so I can sort of focus on myself and keep an eye out on her results. But this time, I was just a supporter. I was just there as her sister, supporting her. And it was so hard, my heart rate when she was racing was 185 which is nuts, and I remember in the final, when she came out of the last upstream gate, I was just screaming. I lost my voice afterwards and I was crying because she had done it."
The Kayak Cross is a fresh event for the Paris Games, one which Fox said has the potential to cause injury. There was a brief consideration she might not try to qualify for it for Paris, but she's confident in her body and training that it won't be a distraction from her other events.
"I wasn't doing too much head-to-head in training, because we want to reduce injury of risk. But also in my racing, my tactics and strategy were, yes, to be aggressive, but not to seek out the fight if I could avoid it," she said.
"We've [also] got a few protective measures, like, I've got some gloves, I've got a mouth guard now, a good helmet, and we've got some other kit that we're working on that could have some protective elements to it as well. But, yeah, collisions happen.
"The good thing about the Games is, physically, everything's a bit more stretched out in terms of the number of events that I do across the Games."
While Fox is happy to celebrate and fully embrace her sister's journey to the Games by competing in the same event, she remains fixated on the elusive K1 gold medal of which she fell agonisingly short of in Tokyo. She produced the fastest time in the final, but accumulated two penalties costing her four seconds -- enough to drop her to third, just one tenth of a second behind the silver medallist.
But she has been in fine form in the lead up to the Paris Games, sweeping golds in the C1, K1, and Kayak Cross in the World Cup meet in Krakow in mid-June, a pair of silvers in the C1 and K1 the week prior in Prague, and a C1 gold in Augsburg at the start of that month. Her preparation, she said, has been about fine-tuning the balance between faster and cleaner runs, in an effort to better her discipline from Tokyo.
"It is good to know the speed is there. I think I've had the fastest times in all the finals, which has been great, but I think the penalties are what kept me off the top step in Prague. It's always a fine line between cutting the lines and chasing the speed, but having the control and managing the penalties. And 15 years in, I'm still working on it," she said.
While there may be external pressure to deliver the long-awaited K1 gold, Fox isn't getting drawn into any discussion of pressure or expectation. At the end of the day, canoe slalom, she says, is an unpredictable sport, and things outside of her control can happen.
"For me, it's staying focused on -- as cliché as it is -- the process and staying focused on what I need to do to get my best paddling out there, and not focusing on a desperation for a K1 gold medal," Fox said.
"I think you've got to be okay with whatever happens. I know that I could get it, but I know that I might not. I know that things might not go my way at all, so it's sort of about being accepting whatever the outcome might be.
"But I'm focusing on my process so that I'm putting myself in the best position for the best possible outcome, and hopefully that is, you know, doing my best race on the day."
With competition kicking off on Saturday (local time), Fox has had time to step back and take in what will be her fourth Olympics. The fact that it's in France, where her mother grew up, also an equally special thing to cherish. And as a relative Olympic veteran, it's now the little things Fox looks to, to find inspiration.
"I think the French have definitely picked up that I'm the 'Frenchest' of the Aussies, let's say, or the most Aussie of the French people they know. But it's lovely to have some extra support as well," she laughed.
"The Olympics is about finding the joy, finding the awe, finding the inspiration in the Olympic movement. That is always something that I look for."