Question: I’ve noticed that the French always refer to the French Open tennis tournament as simply ‘Roland Garros’, after the name of the venue in Paris. But who was Roland?

The tennis tournament is named after the venue it is played at – Stade Roland Garros at Porte d’Auteuil in the west of Paris, close to Bois de Boulogne.

But Garros himself is best known as an aviator, not a tennis player.

Hear the team from The Local talk about Garros – and France’s sporting calendar this summer – in the latest episode of the Talking France podcast. Download here or listen on the link below

In fact, he doesn’t seem to have had much interest in tennis – during his life he played football, was a keen cyclist and played rugby for Stade Français (which still exists and is now a professional rugby club in Paris) but there’s no record that he played tennis regularly or even enjoyed watching it.

He’s best known as a pilot, one of the small group of daredevils who took up the new sport of aviation.

In 1913, at the age of 25 he became the first person to fly across the Mediterranean, which made him very famous in Paris. When World War I broke out he joined up as a pilot and took part in many missions before being shot down and killed in 1918.

Fast-forward 10 years to 1928 and the sports venue that now bears his name was nearing completion.

The Stade français multi sports club, which owned it, was run by a man named Emile Lesueur who had been a close friend of Garros, and it was him who pushed to have the stadium named after Roland Garros.

Often in history ‘close friends’ is used as a euphemism for lover, but there is no other suggestion that either man was gay, so it seems that they were just friends, and Lesueur wanted to honour the man whose life had been snuffed out by war.

By 1928 Garros still had some name recognition in France as a famous pilot and war hero, so it wouldn’t have been a totally left-field choice for the new building, albeit with no tennis connection. 

As the official Stade Roland Garros site puts it: “Yes, Roland Garros had tenuous links with tennis. But few stadiums in the world bear the name of a man who has shown so much willpower, intelligence and courage. Cardinal values for those who aim for the supreme title at the Porte d’Auteuil venue.”