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John Brinkmann
USA
153 Posts |
 Posted - 27/07/2013 : 19:18:13
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Colin:
Great links. Thanks! The sites you've furnished are indeed revealing. Bobby and Peta Minter's car photos have moved here:
http://www.usaviator.net/automotive/Peta2.htm
Betty certainly had her own unique personality, as do most of us when not in costume. I believe she was married for a short time, and I remember her to be a firebrand against the mocking attitude toward women in her time, one which fairly drips from that 1939 film.
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/womens-motor-rally
John
Here's a different kind of image from the women's rally: Pam in the J3, flat out in a snowstorm on an Alpine pass.
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Edited by - John Brinkmann on 27/07/2013 19:35:17 |
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graham holdsworth
United Kingdom
424 Posts |
Posted - 28/07/2013 : 08:59:56
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Wonderful period pictures of Bobby and Peta's cars. Thanks John.
Graham
PB0602 |
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Colin Butchers
United Kingdom
1487 Posts |
Posted - 28/07/2013 : 10:10:44
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Yes John, you are right. The Paris-St.Raphael Rally was not all driving backwards round pylons, or hooking artificial goldfish out of buckets of water. In one year, a girl driver was killed when she crashed her Bugatti on one of the hill-climb sections.
Colin B. |
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John Brinkmann
USA
153 Posts |
Posted - 28/07/2013 : 22:50:23
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Graham:
Thanks for both links are due to Colin.
John
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John Brinkmann
USA
153 Posts |
Posted - 07/08/2013 : 04:29:05
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PB0532 in 1976, Silverstone. Note the photo on the apron.
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Vitesse
United Kingdom
234 Posts |
Posted - 07/08/2013 : 09:33:42
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quote:
Originally posted by John Brinkmann
Betty was also the only person to win an Olympic motoring event—a rally held at the 1936 Berlin Olympics—in a Singer.
Pedantic note: although it was called the Olympic Rally it was not an official Olympic event. The only time Olympic medals were awarded for an event involving powered machinery was for Motorboating in 1908.
There were suggestions that a rally might be organised in 1948 in conjunction with the London games, but nothing came of that.
quote:
Originally posted by Colin Butchers
Yes John, you are right. The Paris-St.Raphael Rally was not all driving backwards round pylons, or hooking artificial goldfish out of buckets of water. In one year, a girl driver was killed when she crashed her Bugatti on one of the hill-climb sections.
Colin B.
Are you thinking of Renée Friderich, Colin? If so, it was a Delage - although her father was of course the Bugatti concessionaire in Nice.
http://www.motorsportmemorial.org/searchall.php?s=friderich&db=ct&s_into=all&s_db=selecteddb&Search=Submit
There was at least one other fatality on the Paris-St-Raphaël: Marguerite Accarie in 1970. |
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Colin Butchers
United Kingdom
1487 Posts |
Posted - 07/08/2013 : 10:27:32
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You could be right Richard. I got my information (or misinformation as the case may be) from a web site I came across relating specifically to the Paris - Vichy - St.Raphael Rallies Feminin. A sweet young thing (who's name now escapes me) has been researching all of these rallies, and the unfortunate lady sports-car driver's demise was mentioned.
Colin B. |
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John Brinkmann
USA
153 Posts |
Posted - 10/08/2013 : 23:06:20
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[Pedantic note: although it was called the Olympic Rally it was not an official Olympic event. The only time Olympic medals were awarded for an event involving powered machinery was for Motorboating in 1908.
The Singer boys will be disappointed and the Daily Mail should get its facts straight.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/motoring/article-2184278/Welcome-home-car-beat-Nazis-Olympic-gold-1936.html
"A planned presentation at the Olympic Stadium was hastily rescheduled to another venue when the authorities realised a British two-seater sports car had beaten the pride of the German automotive industry.
Miss Haig recalled: ‘After many introductions and much heel-clicking, we were presented with a velvet case containing the only gold medal for the rally.’"
Makes one wonder how an unauthorized Olympic Rally to Berlin could have been overlooked by the authorities in power at the time. |
Edited by - John Brinkmann on 10/08/2013 23:28:48 |
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Vitesse
United Kingdom
234 Posts |
Posted - 11/08/2013 : 20:51:24
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The IOC wasn't as jealous of its image and trade marks in those days. And in fact the 1936 Games introduced quite a lot of what we now take for granted as part of Olympic tradition - most notably the flame relay.
The Olympic Rally story crops up regularly and there have been other motoring events tagged on to Olympic Games. But they were all entirely unofficial: there were some "Olympic Sweepstake" sprint car races at Legion Ascot in 1932, an "Olympic Grand Prix" at Melbourne in 1956 and another "Olympia Rally" at the time of the Munich Olympics in 1972. There were also some obscure motoring events held at the time of the 1900 Games in Paris, but these are just as likely to have been (as the Olympics pretty much was) a sideshow connected with the World's Fair: there was also an international motoring congress there at the same time! Finally, there were also two motorcycle races at St Louis in 1904, but those were officially "demonstration events".
Here's the index page for results for the 1936 Olympics, showing all the official sports.
http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/summer/1936/
No rallying ...
As for the Daily Fail "getting its facts straight" - I think you might be better off with National Enquirer! They are obsessed with anything even vaguely to do with Nazi Germany and never let the facts get in the way of a good story. |
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John Brinkmann
USA
153 Posts |
Posted - 14/08/2013 : 00:30:54
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Historical Perspective
There is history relived over tea and laughter and faded photos on a cool afternoon, history which lives and breathes as it pours with emotion from the mind of one who lived it.
And there is the history of documents: facts recorded by historians—uncovered, evaluated, compared and digested into truth by those whose purpose it is to be right.
We need both.
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Cathelijne
Netherlands
744 Posts |
Posted - 14/08/2013 : 07:25:25
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| Hear hear! |
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Vitesse
United Kingdom
234 Posts |
Posted - 15/08/2013 : 09:53:45
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I have absolutely no argument with that, John.
I'm involved in three different lines of motor sport research at the moment - none particularly MMM-related - where what "pours with emotion" is leavened with "how I would like it to be remembered" and where, especially in two of those cases, the "how I would like it to be remembered" runs contrary to the facts and could have been exploded if the (now dead) writer who recorded it had done some more research rather than merely trusting what he was told ...
In all three cases, the myth has become accepted as the truth. |
Edited by - Vitesse on 15/08/2013 09:55:39 |
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Roger Farmer
United Kingdom
1 Posts |
Posted - 02/11/2013 : 23:51:13
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I was very interested in your discussion regarding Betty Haig. Betty was the only British entrant in the Olympic scatter rally of 1936. The event was organised by the motor clubs of the respective countries. The UK entrant was managed by the RAC from their offices in Birmingham. Whilst in Germany all motorists' organisations and clubs were replaced by „Der Deutsche Automobil-Club e.V.“ (the German Car Club) which was closely associated with the National Socialist Motor Corps.
The event took place between July 22nd and July 31st 1936 to coincide with the games that ran from July 25th to 16th August. The rally went largely unreported in the British motoring press at the time and the Germans were not too worried as 4 of the first six places had gone to Auto Unions in the German Grand Prix held on July 26th. Like all things in life, timing is everything!
The scatter rally has run as a means of showing what a beautiful country Germany is and drawing international attention to Germany. However, the reoccupation of the Rhineland in March might have drawn rather more attention to Germany than it wanted and this may be one reason for the low British turn out. Betty wrote a good account of the Rally but it has gone virtually unrecorded in all other respects.
I am currently writing Betty's biography and I would really like to hear from anyone who knew her or met her. She is representative of a whole generation of pre-war women drivers who achieved great things but are now largely forgotten. |
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PB0532
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