Talk about sport and contextualising it in 1911 it is quite difficult. The sport most followed football, it was still a practice amateur. Just it had been four editions of the Olympic Games and their continuity was already in question to be overshadowed by the Universal Exhibitions. Problems of today such as the television rights could not even imagine. For this reason, the protagonists of the sport are still considered authentic heroes. Demigods adventurers who broke barriers. Now that we have traffic jams to reach the top of mount Everestin 1911 still had even raised the possibility of climbing the highest mountain of the earth, so stay tuned. In the end, the major challenges are the engine of the human being and at that time to look up and reach high-it was high-octane fuel.
The sky was the ceiling. At the beginning of the TWENTIETH century there were plenty of projects to try to fly through the air. First planning and then challenging the nature with heavy machinery that could transport passengers. Aviation became in one of the sports-exhibition more spectacular for the public at large. Little by little is going to reach new milestones: flights for two people, flights of greater distance, more speed, the first pioneering female… The military industry paid special attention, aware that the air it would be the next medium, the next field of battle economic. Also rubbed the eyes of the newspapers that, given the interest generated, began to organize tests and races. Do races air? Like you hear, everything, and just when we’re about years in aviation.
Lluis Sitjar, Rosemary Rope, Carranza… the stages of franco who will not return
The debate around the links with the franco regime should be carried out case-by-case basis and, even so, they will commit injustices
The case is that, even in its first stage, these tests aroused passions and concentrated to a crowd of spectators. On occasions, the aircraft participants are wagons which broke down without being able to start the take-off. In flight, the guarantees were not absolute and accidents were practically insured. In march, at the Hippodrome of Madrid, an exhibition by the French aviator Jean Mauvais was carried ahead the life of one person and left several injured. The pilot lost control of the aircraft and crashed. Far from rethinking the safety and convenience of these shows, there was no type of problma continue holding them.
Just a couple of months after, Spain would take part in his first international event: a race of three stages that linked Paris and Madrid, organized by the French newspaper ‘Le Petit Parisien’. The may 21, 1911 started the test, with 28 enrolled. In a crowded aerodrome of Issy-Les-Molineaux, just outside of the capital gala, the pilots took the output in intervals of 10-15 minutes to Angouleme, goal. But the mechanical problems aguaron full party and only the mitiquísimo Roland Garros started the flight with no problems. Of the rest, Jules Vedrines took off, but had to return, and André Frey broke the motor, among other calamities.
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Yes, the worst part was, without a doubt Louis Emile Trainthat had to be turned by a fault, and, without wanting to, dirigó your plane to a few people who walked desprecupadas for the landing zone. The clueless, a select group of authorities that previously had disobeyed the instructions to stay in their stands. Wounded were the prime minister of FranceErnest Monisand above all the minister of War, Henri Berteauxat the step of the device amputated an arm, and hit him in the head, killing him. The chaos took over the airfield and was delayed by a day the start of the test. Only Roland Garros was a success, to Angoulême.
Three pilots in the running
At the resumption of the prologue, more unpleasant news: several of the participants abandoned by the poor state of their aircraft and many of those who left have not completed the stage. Stephen Beaumont left him at about 50km from Paris, as Frey. Only Eugène Gilbert and Vedrines reached Angoulême next to Roland Garros. In the second stage, with three riders in the fray and the goal of crossing the Pyrenees to San Sebastian, the mishaps continued to occur. Roland Garros ran out of fuel and had to land in the Monte Jaizquibel, monte coastal highest of the bay of Biscay. Gibert had to stop in Bayonne to repair the plane and only Vedrines, evil than good, was able to reach the Basque Country without interference. The passage through the Pyrenees caused a new delay in the race, but this time not for mechanical reasons, but of health: the three pilots presented a box of hypothermia advanced and they kept one more day of rest before continuing the march toward Madrid.
In the supposed last day (so it was going to be in the theory), new absurdities. Roland Garros, which seemed to be the clear favorite, crashed his ship, damaged a wing and said good-bye to the adventure. Gibert, in a fact so curious as hilarious, followed the same path of his countryman to be, as they tell the legends, attacked by an eagle and it could be undertaken subsequently shot against the animal, damaging the plane. Vedrines did not escape the instability, landing in Quinalapalla (Burgos) to solve some problems. Saved, yes, an ace under the sleeve: to be the only competitor in the fray, asked the organization of the race a day extra to try to repair their ship. Despite the fact that the three stages had already doubled the estimated time for completion, the responsible accededieron to your request.
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Decorated by Alfonso XIII
Vedrines made night in Burgos and resumed the route. To tell you the way in the dark, the neighbors of the towns he went through lit bonfires. Overcoming a myriad of problems, Vedrines came to Madrid to become a hero. In the dehesa de Santa Quiteria of Getafe, the expectation was maximum. Besides the financial prize, in the following days received the congratulations of the king Alfonso XIII, which we decorated with the Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso XII, and the Congress. Vedrines it would end up turning in a galaxy of aviation by winning races and performing various displays (for example, landing on the rooftop of the galleries Lafayette, where he is now a tombstone with your name commemorating the action) to then die young, just 37 years ago, in a plane crash.
We owe him that began to arise claims by fly over airspace of foreign, going into Germany without permission, for which he was sentenced to a year in prison. Vedrines was always contrary to put air borders. Younger than him, but also flying through the sky, he died Roland Garros, fighting in the World War I. Gilbert also get fame by knocking down German planes in the war, in addition to winning several races later.
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