Roland Garros
"Stade Roland Garros, Paris (Ank Kumar, Infosys) 07" — Photo by Ank Kumar / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
From high-altitude flights to the red clay pits.
While his name is synonymous with tennis giants, his true passion was navigating the clouds. He was an aviation pioneer who famously mastered the first non-stop flight across the Mediterranean Sea.
Did you know?
Roland Garros was a prisoner of war during WWI and managed to escape from a German camp by disguising himself as a soldier and stealing a plane.
A pioneer of the skies whose name is now know for something else.
He traded his propeller for a racquet, posthumously.
The first to conquer the Mediterranean, not with a ball, but an engine.
His legendary loop-the-loop was not on a center court.
A French aviator whose namesake is a Grand Slam battleground.