The Race That Turned to Ruin

Summary

Nick Davidson | The Atavist Magazine | March 2025 | 2,300 words (8 minutes)This is an excerpt from issue no. 161, “The Balloon That Fell From the Sky.”ONE The winds were fast and the skies clear for the two days and nights that Mike Wallace and Kevin Brielmann had been airborne. The Spirit of Springfield, Wallace’s 1,000-cubic-meter hydrogen-gas balloon, drifted eastward over Poland at around 5,000 feet. It was already the longest flight either pilot had endured. The Americans had launched from Wil, Switzerland, on Saturday, September 9, crossing Lake Constance in the moonlight alongside a muster of 14 other balloons representing seven nations.Each balloon carried two copilots vying to prevail in the 1995 Coupe Aéronautique Gordon Bennett, ballooning’s oldest and most prestigious aeronautical race. The goal was to travel the farthest distance possible before landing. Only the world’s most daring and decorated aeronauts could claim a spot in the field. The race typically lasted one or two days, and occasionally stretched into a third. No Gordon Bennett balloon had ever flown a fourth night, but favorable weather and a stretch of newly opened airspace now made that feat attainable for the first time. “It was fabulous, and we knew it,” said Martin Stürzlinger, a member of the ground crew for a balloon called the D-Caribbean.The Atavist, our sister publication, publishes one deeply reported, elegantly designed story each month. Support The Atavist by becoming a member.By noon on Monday, September 11, the race’s third day, only ten of the 15 balloons remained aloft. The rest had flown as far as they could before landing in Austria, Germany, or Poland. From the air, Wallace and Brielmann knew only that their friends Alan Fraenckel and John Stuart-Jervis, who raced under the U.S. Virgin Islands flag, were still flying nearby in the D-Caribbean. The two teams had remained within a couple dozen miles of each other for the race’s duration. Riding the same winds, they’d been i...