Baron Camille Jenatzy was known for being a practical joker. One night in 1913 he had some guests at his hunting lodge in the Ardennes, and as a prank he hid in some bushes outside the house and mimicked the sounds of a wild boar.
It was his last joke, a guest leaned out of a window and shot him dead with a rifle.
And so died the winner of the first international motor race to be held in the British Isles. That race was held in 1903, but not on a famous circuit, it was run on country roads south-west of Dublin, Ireland.
This is the story of that race.
Gordon Bennett (1841 - 1918) was the owner of the New York Herald newspaper, which 
had been founded by his father. Something of a playboy, he was interested in many sports, and founded an international series of motor races.
Bennett donated a trophy, The Gordon Bennett Cup, to the Automobile Club de France (ACF), who organised the contests from 1900 - 1905, always on public roads.
Competition in the Gordon Bennett car races was between national teams, each with a maximum of three cars. The rules stated that every part of each car had to be made in the team's country, and this ruled most nations out of the competition, for very few countries at that time were industrially advanced enough to make all the parts for a motor car.
In 1902 Selwyn Edge won the Gordon Bennet cup for Britain in a Napier - he was the only competitor to finish - and that gave him the right to choose the venue for the next year's event. That posed a problem, because racing on public roads was illegal in Britain, as it still is.
The Venue
The Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland were very keen for the race to be held in the British Isles, and their secretary suggested Ireland as the venue. It may be of interest here to note that car sales in Britain had tripled after Edge's victory in 1902, and the industry savoured a home event quite mightily.
The editor of the Dublin Motor Newssuggested an area south-west of Dublin, and a massive lobbying operation was launched for a law to be passed permitting roads to be closed to the public for the race. Their efforts paid off, and a law permitting some roads in County Kildare, Ireland, to be closed for the race was passed as the 'Light Locomotives (Ireland) Bill' on March 27th 1903.
The race date was set as Thursday, July 2nd, 1903.
After much discussion and many changes the course finally adopted was two loops joined to form a rough figure-eight.
The length of the smaller loop through Castledermot was 40 miles, the larger one through Kildare was 52 miles.
Contestants would be started at seven-minute intervals to prevent bunching on the course, so strictly speaking it was a time-trial rather than a race.
Each of the seven population centres shown on my sketch was a control zone, where competitors had to slow down and follow a cyclist. They would also be held at a control zone if another car had departed within the previous seven minutes; the organisers were determined to prevent wheel-to-wheel racing on the narrow roads.
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about 1 month ago
Lovely history...picked it and starz
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