Sergei Utochkin

Sergei Utochkin (1876 to 1916) was a Russian cyclist, sportsman and aviator, and the second Russian pilot after Mikhail Efimov. Born in Odessa to a merchant family and orphaned early, he first rose in a balloon on 1 October 1907, flying over Odessa at 1,400 metres with the writer Alexander Kuprin. In spring 1910 he took off in an aeroplane bought by the publisher Baron Ksidias, flying without any instruction or training, a rare case in the history of aviation. For three years he travelled to about 600 cities of the Russian Empire flying before the public, and young Sergei Korolev watched one of his flights at Nizhyn. Known as the man of all kinds of sport, he was also the first to ride down the Potemkin Stairs by cycle and car. A 1962 Dovzhenko Studio film, In the Dead Loop, was made about him.