PARIS (AP) — Yannick Noah, the 1983 French Open champion, was appointed Thursday as the new head of France's para tennis beginning next year.
The French tennis federation said in a statement that Noah will be in charge of coordinating wheelchair, visually-impaired as well as deaf and hard-of-hearing tennis activities.
Noah had a first experience with disability tennis over the summer when he led the France men’s wheelchair tennis team at the Paris Paralympic Games.
“His main role will be to continue structuring the para tennis department by steering the training and ‘high level’ strategy and supporting the development of all para tennis activities across the country,” the French tennis federation said.
Noah, a celebrity in his home country, is the last man from France to win a Grand Slam singles title and reached a career-best No. 3 in the ATP rankings in 1986. He later was his country’s Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup captains, leading both teams to championships.
He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2005.
Noah said he was "delighted" by his appointment to lead a “new mission, which is particularly close to my heart.”
“I had an incredible human experience working alongside the players in the French wheelchair tennis team at the Paralympic Games in Paris and I didn’t want this great story to end there,” he added.
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
FILE -Former French tennis player and singer Yannick Noah looks on during the inauguration of a fresco retracing his life, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of his victory at Roland Garros in 1983, on day one of the Roland-Garros Open tennis tournament in Paris, May 28, 2023. (Anne-Christine Poujoulat, Pool via AP, File)
SHEFFIELD, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 28, 2024--
BOW, the universal robotics software company, has today announced the appointment of Liz Upton, Co-Founder of Raspberry Pi (LSE:RPI), as Chair of its board.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241112850063/en/
The robotics market is projected to reach $260 billion by 2030, yet realising the full potential of robotics is out of reach for many companies and industries because of the high cost and complexity of programming robots. BOW’s robot-agnostic software development kit (SDK) and the BOW platform solves this bottleneck, making it possible for the first time to program any robot using any operating system in any programming language.
BOW – which stands for “Bettering our Worlds” - makes it possible for any software developer to create and deploy robotics applications and manage robots. By removing the need for highly-specialised robotics programmers, BOW’s universal robotics platform allows companies to leverage the skills of generalist software developers and opens up valuable new use cases in sectors that have previously been underserved by robotics.
Liz Upton, who co-founded Raspberry Pi in 2008, played a crucial role as Chief Marketing Officer in the company’s growth, achieving sales of over 60 million units worldwide and a successful IPO on the London Stock Exchange earlier this year.
Liz Upton’s appointment follows news of BOW’s recent partnership with XPLOR, the world’s first Live Events R&D and Innovation centre. The partnership is pioneering the adoption of robotics in the film and creative industries, focusing on developing new applications, improving efficiency and lowering production costs.
Liz Upton, Chair at BOW said: “The BOW team’s passion for innovation and their commitment to developing the world’s first universal robotics platform is inspiring. At Raspberry Pi, we have always been driven by the mission of democratising computing for all. Robotics similarly has the potential to help solve global challenges but only if we can remove the barriers to its adoption. BOW solves the current complexity of developing robotics applications and makes programming any robot in any programming language possible for the first time. I’m excited to join this pioneering and fast-growing company as Chair and to helping BOW make the tremendous benefits of robotics universally accessible.”
Nick Thompson, CEO of BOW, said: “We are delighted to welcome Liz Upton to BOW as our new Chair and I’d like to thank our former Chair, Pete Hopton, for his contribution to BOW since 2020. Liz brings a wealth of experience in scaling a transformational technology business globally. In addition, her deep commitment to innovation and education aligns perfectly with BOW’s mission to enable millions of software developers to develop robotics applications for the betterment of our world.”
For more information about BOW and its leadership team, visit https://usebow.com/
About BOW:
Founded in 2020, BOW is the world’s leading universal robotics software company, working with robotic hardware manufacturers and OEMs, systems integrators, roboticists, and software developers. BOW enables software developers to create portable robotics applications using their preferred programming language and operating system. The company is headquartered in Sheffield, UK.
Co-Founder of Raspberry Pi, Liz Upton, joins Robotics Software Company, BOW, as Chair of the Board (Photo: Business Wire)
