+------+----------------+---------+------------------+ | | | H.P. of | Speed | | Year.| Winner. | Motor. |(Miles per Hour). | +------+----------------+---------+------------------+ | 1909 | Curtiss | 30 | 48 | | 1910 | Grahame-White | 100 | 61 | | 1911 | Weymann | 100 | 78 | | 1912 | Vedrines | 140 | 105 | | 1913 | Prevost | 160 | 126 | +------+----------------+---------+------------------+ With such a growth in speed there has been, naturally, a greater risk should some mishap occur; and there are two pilots who, meeting with disaster while flying in this great race, had cause to thank Providence that they were not killed outright. One is the French champion, Leblanc, who went to America with a 100-h.p. Bleriot for the contest of 1910. When flying at high speed, having nearly completed his course, Leblanc’s motor stopped suddenly, owing to the failure of his petrol. A strong wind was blowing across the track, and, as he came planing down, the airman was swept away sideways. Rushing steeply earthward, his craft only partly in hand, he came into violent collision with a telegraph pole. The bow of his machine struck the pole, low down near its base; and so fierce was the impact that the pole was snapped in two, despite the fact that it was thick round as a man’s body. The front of the monoplane was crumpled by the shock, and to those who saw the accident, and heard the crash which accompanied it, there seemed no chance that the pilot should escape alive. And yet in reality, save for some cuts and bruises, Leblanc was unhurt. At the moment of the collision he had been hurled from his seat; shooting out sideways over one wing, he had missed striking the telegraph pole, and had avoided also any entanglement with the wreckage of his machine. For some distance he whirled through the air, so great was the force of the collision; then, when he did touch ground, it was upon a grassy bank, down which he rolled without breaking a limb.