1900 Summer Olympics

Rawlinson himself had excelled wherever danger and competition intersected.

He served as an officer with the 17th Lancers in India, won a gold medal in polo at the 1900 Paris Olympics, and raced a French Deraque Roadster on the Isle of Man.

He flew experimental aircraft alongside the Wright brothers and survived the kinds of crashes that killed others, including his friend Charles Rolls, co-developer of the Rolls-Royce, who died when his biplane plunged to the ground before a crowd in Bournemouth in July 1910.

France would test Toby in a different way.