If Roland Garros is known throughout the world thanks to the tennis tournament that bears its name in Paris, it is not for its practice of this racket sport. In fact, he distinguished himself in many sports, football, rugby and cycling. Everywhere except in tennis… Born in Saint-Denis de la Réunion in 1888, Roland Garros especially excelled in another field: aviation. “It is for this reason that the so-called Garros has passed into posterity,” reports the official website of the French tennis tournament.
First of all, he is a very young entrepreneur. At the age of 21, he bought a car dealership not far from the Arc de Triomphe, after leaving the HEC business school. But it was in 1909 that something clicked. He was invited by a friend to attend an air show and immediately fell in love with this discipline. As a true resourceful man, he immediately bought a device thanks to the profits from his automobile business, passed the patent and made his first solo flights.
Only four years later, he made the very first crossing of the Mediterranean Sea aboard a monoplane. It thus connects Saint-Raphaël in the south of France to Bizerte in Tunisia. This is the beginning of fame. But the arrival of the First World War will upset all his plans. He first enlisted as a simple soldier then as planes entered the conflict, Garros became the very first single-seater fighter in history, armed with a machine gun.
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2024-03-31 16:00:00
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