The United States filled his eyes with stars. Like basketball players across the Atlantic, Jacqueline – “Jacky” – Chazalon wore a sponge headband on her forehead. From them, she mainly drew inspiration from her game. In 2023, when the National Basketball Association (NBA) floods the planet with videos of its meetings, the thing is not out of the ordinary. But “in the 1970s, it was quite newrelocates the former French player. I was an American basketball fan..
As if to come full circle, the one who was the spearhead of the Demoiselles de Clermont, tricolor armada winner of thirteen championships and four times finalist of the European Cup, could make its entrance on Saturday 1er April, at the prestigious Hall of Fame, an institution in Springfield (Massachusetts) which hosts the biggest stars of the orange ball for eternity.
Jacky Chazalon, 78, is one of the candidates selected to join the pantheon of American basketball. If his compatriot Tony Parker is assured – according to American journalists – of becoming the first Frenchman to receive this honor, the former winger could well accompany him. “I filed my file maybe twenty years ago, on the advice of a former American player who played in Franceshe says. And like last year, I am selected among the finalists. But to my knowledge, the only European inducted into the Hall of Fame is [Uljana] Semenova. »
A name she knows well: the Russian Soviet (now Latvian) Uljana Semenova and her 2.13 meters have systematically blocked the way to the teams of Jacky Chazalon, in club as in selection. On four occasions, his Clermont University Club (CUC) reached the final of the European Cup, only to fail there, defeated by the Baltic Goliath and his troops. Showing 1.72 meters under the fathom, the Habs did not really have the dimensions to compete. “In any case, we could not beat her”recognizes the one who was named in 1999 the greatest French basketball player of the XXe century and who has worked hard for the popularity of his sport in France.
“The French poetess of basketball”
In the summer of 1974, the New York Times evoked this “French basketball poet”which, according to the prestigious American newspaper, was “perhaps the most well-known sports personality” of his country, with the exception of the skier Jean-Claude Killy. If she remained an amateur at the time, like all basketball players – and most French athletes –, Jacky Chazalon was nonetheless a star. “The press talked a lot about us, much more than today’s basketball playersshe recalls. Because we were on national channels, free of charge. »
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