Metz hosted the launch of the Gordon Bennett gas balloon race this weekend, an honour earned by a French team's victory the previous year.
The Gordon Bennett Cup, the world's oldest and most prestigious gas balloon race, commenced on Friday evening from the former Metz-Frescaty air base in France. 24 crews from 11 nations are competing to fly the greatest distance across Europe.
The Gordon Bennett Cup is "the Everest of gas ballooning", jokes Christophe Houver. In ten participations, Houver, a pilot from the French department of Moselle, paired with Guillaume Jouaville in the France 1 balloon, has already won the prestigious competition twice. That was in 2017 and 2013, alongside Vincent Leÿs, the legend of French gas ballooning (nine victories).
The event is a de facto world championship for distance in gas balloons. The race was first held in Paris's Tuileries Garden in 1906 and is named after James Gordon Bennett Jr., the son of a wealthy US press magnate and a noted patron of early air and motorsports.
After several delays, the first balloon – representing Poland – ascended into a moonlit sky at 10pm to the sound of its national anthem and cheers from the public. Carlo Arendt, a Luxembourgish pilot who participated in 2019, compared the spectacle to the Olympic Games.
Eric Décellières, president of the French Aerostation Federation and pilot of the France 2 balloon, emphasised the event's historical significance as the oldest continuous aeronautical race in the world.
The competition is governed by the same strict rules established at its inception: each crew is allocated 1,000 cubic metres of hydrogen, and the two-person team must fly as far as possible in a straight line. "Regardless of the duration, the winner is the one who goes the furthest," explained Décellières.
The event's location is determined by the previous winner's nationality. The 2024 launch from Metz follows the 2023 victory of the French team, Eric Décellières and Benoît Havret, who covered 2,661 km in 86 hours from the United States.
In the 2023 race, which launched from Münster, Germany, the Austrian crew of Christian Wagner and Stefanie Liller won after a 2,111 km, 67-hour flight to southern Portugal. The Moselle team finished a close fourth, covering 2,084 km – just 27 kilometres short of first place.
The event's distance record of 3,400 km was set in 2005 by Belgian pilots Bob Berben and Benoît Siméons on a flight from Albuquerque, USA, to Canada.
