Maurice Farmanwas English. Like de Knyff he drove a 13.6 litre chain-drive Panhard.
Ferdinand Gabrielwas the teams only Frenchman. Just 23 years old, he had won the Paris-Madrid race earlier in the year, and competed in Ireland driving the 11.6 litre 70bhp Mors car that had borne him to victory.
Driving For America
Alexander Wintonhad started with a bicycle workshop in Ohio, and progressed to making his own cars. The 17.0 litre 80bhp Winton car he entered in the 1903 race was built by himself and his chief engineer Harold B. Anderson, it is now in the Smithsonian.
Percy Owenwas manager of the Winton Automobile company, and of course drove one of their cars, with an 8.5 litre 40bhp engine.
L. P. Mooers was an engineer with the Peerless car company, competing in one of their 11.0 litre 80bhp machines.
The Race
At 07.00 on July 2nd Selwyn Edge (Britain) was the first away from the start. He was followed by the others at regular specified intervals.
Stocks (Britain) was soon out of the race after a collision with a wire fence. Keene (Germany) 
clocked the fastest Lap 1, followed by Edge (Britain) , Farman (France), and Jarrott (Britain).
On Lap 2 Jarrott (Britain) suffered a steering failure, and Mooers (USA) was also out, with engine overheating. Jenatzy (Germany) was fastest on this lap, followed by De Knyff (France), Edge (Britain), and Gabriel (France). Edge's tyres tended to come off their rims when hot, and he rapidly fell away as a contendor.
On Lap 3 Jenatzy was again the fastest, again followed by De Knyff. Keene (USA) dropped out with mechanical problems in this lap.
Jenatzy was fastest on all the remaining laps, and won the race and its £8000 purse with a margin of 11minutes 40 seconds over De Knyff. Then came the other two drivers for France, Farman and Gabriel, and they were the only team to get all three cars to the finish.
None of the American cars, and only one of the British cars finished.
The photo (left) shows Camille Jenatzy in his white Mercedes being congratulated on his win.
Some sources claim that Germany was allocated black as their team colour for the Gordon Bennett races, but all contemporary sources describe them as white. Photographic evidence also supports white as being Germany's colour.
And so it was all over. There were to be many more international motor races in the British Isles, but the Athay area of County Kildare had staged the first, and history had been made.
After The Race
Non-UK readers may be surprised to learn that 'Gordon Bennett' became an epithet for astonished disbelief in parts of Britain, especially the London area. In researching this article I came across several different alleged reasons. According to who you believe, it was because his fiancee's mother exclaimed 'Gordon Bennett!' when he drunkenly urinated into her fireplace at a reception. In a similar story, a grand piano received the urine. In all versions the engagement was broken off.
You will be realising that Bennett was far from being the sombre gentelman his photograph might suggest.
Some have it that 'Gordon Bennett!' was first heard when he flew a plane through a barn, or when he rode naked through New York for a bet, or when he drove around a corner so fast that Winston Churchill's mother was thrown from his car.
Bennett lived mainly in Europe from 1877 until his death in 1918, chiefly in Paris and on his yacht, running his newspaper via telegraph. He had a long string of women, and only married at the age of 73 for business reasons, because it gave him a family link to the Reuters news agency.
0 Comments
Loading more comments...
This comment and all replies have been deleted This comment has been deleted Undo delete