Sporting events

While the first automobile event ran from Paris to Rouen on 22 July 1894, the first officially supervised race didn't take place until mid-June 1895 with the "Paris-Bordeaux-Paris" event. The Tour de France Automobile, the Gordon Bennett Cup, "Paris-Vienna", and "Paris-Madrid" were the first benchmarks in auto racing (among a myriad of other races: hill climbs, kilometre speed record trials, track races, etc.), which pitted the best drivers of the era and the jewels of French companies—Panhard & Levassor, Renault, Peugeot and others—against foreign machines. Deus ex machina...