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Reader question: Who was Roland Garros and what is his connection to French tennis?

You might know it as the French Open, but in France it is simply 'le Roland Garros' tennis tournament - but who was Roland Garros?

Reader question: Who was Roland Garros and what is his connection to French tennis?
Roland Garros, who gave his name to the famous Paris tennis complex. Photo: AFP

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.

Roland Garros (4th from right, in civilian clothes) pictured in Tunisia after his record-breaking 1913 flight. Photo by STAFF / AFP

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.”

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PARIS

Four killed in two Paris apartment fires

At least four people were killed in apartment building fires that broke out overnight in two separate Paris neighbourhoods, police sources and prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Four killed in two Paris apartment fires

Three bodies were found soon after 8am in a seventh-floor flat near the Opera Garnier in the centre of the French capital. The blaze on the Boulevard des Italiens is believed to have started between 4am and 5am.

Those killed “couldn’t get out of the window because of bars installed to prevent burglars getting in via the roof,” said Ariel Weil, mayor of the city’s four central districts.

“Around 10 people living on the same floor were rescued by firefighters who got in through the roof,” he added.

Weil and a police source said investigators were looking into whether the fire could have started with a gas leak.

ANALYSIS Why do Paris apartment fires so often prove fatal?

Several firefighting vehicles were still on the scene by late morning, an AFP journalist saw, while central Paris prosecutors have opened an investigation.

Prosecutors are also probing a second deadly fire in the 15th district, near the Eiffel Tower in western Paris.

“A 60-year-old person was found dead and another is in critical condition, with two in serious condition,” investigators said.

A second police source said a woman had been killed after the fire apparently broke out in her apartment.

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