Who is roland garros named after

Thereafter, the French decided to build a tennis stadium for themselves. During that time, there were certain negotiations that took place for the land area, the stadium was predicated on naming it after a World War I soldier.

He became the first aviator to fly over the Mediterranean. It was the first tournament to have equal price money for both the men and the women. Who was Roland Garros?

Born in Saint Denis in , Roland Garros became a prominent name in World War 1 and was one of the pioneers of aviation in the early days after the Wright Brothers. In his youth, Garros was recovering from a bout of pneumonia that nearly took his life. In order to restore his health, he took up cycling, tennis, rugby and football. It is perhaps this sporting pedigree that saw him regain full fitness. After this, he became an aviator.

T he French Open at Roland Garros begins on Sunday, the tournament which will forever immortalise the name of an amateur French player who was, in his lifetime, better known for his aviation activities. Garros , born October 6, , was a pioneering aviator in the early days of flying and later a fighter pilot in World War One, where he would lose his life at the age of just In , a decade following his death, both the French Open tournament and the complex of courts used took the name Roland Garros in his honour.

Garros was a sportsman, with aviation and air sport being one and the same at their outset, unlike today. When he was younger, he had a talent for football, rugby and cycling, a sport that helped get his respiratory system back to full strength after a bout of pneumonia when he was Having been invited to the Champagne region by a friend, he attended his first air show and fell completely in love with these crazy machines.

On 6th September , two years after the birth of this all-consuming passion for aircraft, Garros broke his first altitude record, reaching 3, metres just under 13, feet after taking off from Houlgate beach. He took part in a series of air show and races, astonishing spectators with his bravery and inventiveness.

He quickly became a star in the discipline, with hundreds of thousands of people in both Europe and South America flocking to watch him in action. Roland Garros had great ambitions and wanted to fly over the seas. He set himself a new challenge: to cross the Mediterranean, something that had never been done at the time. This epic journey would take nearly eight hours.