Rex, the Argentine pilot who used the pseudonym of the Meteoro series so that his “old lady” would not suffer, has died

In the last hours of Tuesday, news shook the automotive sector: Gabriel Adamoli He died at the age of 57 after battling cancer and has sparked interest in reviewing that story he recalled two years ago in an interview with clarion. “Before me there was a lot, it was the most normal thing because there were a lot of people who really didn’t want them to find out who they were because of their work. But then he stopped using it and nobody ran under an alias at that time “, he recalled that until recently, about ten years ago, when he retired, he was known on road courses as Rexname taken from Meteor, the Japanese anime that I used to watch every morning before going to school in the late 70s.

The information was confirmed by TC 2000, one of the categories he has competed in throughout his career, via his official Twitter account.

When Juan Gálvez made his motorsport debut, he did it as quote, a pseudonym that responded to his nickname and which allowed him to run unnoticed. Especially in the first stage, many riders hid their real name behind a fictitious one, often taken from history or literature: this was Juan Manuel Fangio rivadavia; Angelo LoValvo, hippomenes; Enrique Diaz Saenz Valiente, Patoruzu; or Nestor Marincovich, sandokan. Today running under a pseudonym involves an expense equal to obtaining a license for a national category such as Track Tourism: 23,400 pesos.

Why Rex and not Speed? “Because it was my own story, apart from Meteoro he was the idol of the story but he was the boludo. Rex was a secret agent. Because of my old lady, I already knew when I ran away it would be Rex. I’ve known this since I was 15. And I enjoyed being Rex twice as much because I’m a fan, I have the whole collection on DVD,” she revealed.

Although his connection to motorsport did not start on screen but at home, with a father who prepared competition cars -like Don Fox, the father of Rex, Speed ​​and Sparky-, his mother never wanted him to race.

“In fact, when I was 14, my father bought me a Formula 5, he took it home and my mum said to him: ‘This is getting out of here, I didn’t bring children into the world to kill myself and if it doesn’t get out, you get out’. My house was a normal house: my mother was in charge», jokes who has been doing theater for three years ring 4 and studies “Direction, Screenplay and Editing” -he is preparing his fourth short film-, as well as being a musician and a lawyer.

The car didn’t leave home but in the uncle’s workshop in Tandil, where Formula 5 was experiencing a boom in the 80s. Although the illusion of racing ended when his uncle died of a sudden heart attack a few months later, it resurfaced a few years later when he and his brother opened a racing car parts store on Avenida San Martín and Beiró -Adamoli Competición- and he reconnected with motorsport. “This is my chance to approach motorsport, to see if I can race”she thought and went on with her dream.

“A year after having the headquarters, when I was 19, I convinced my mother that she had to buy a Fiat 600 to let a driver of the category race and thus show the irons that my old man made. A lie, it was all a lie. Mine mother, who was the one who kept the accounts even though my brother and I were the owners, agrees We get her to buy the car, I take it to a garage so they prepare and refine it for me. update to category E I start running alone under the pseudonym of Rex, from the name of Meteoro’s brother, so that my old lady doesn’t notice that I was running“, he remarks.

Between the band, the car, and plans to marry his girlfriend, he didn’t have enough money to race often, but at least he made it and won. But doing it behind her mother’s back only lasted a while, until the neighborhood butcher—thinking he already knew it—congratulated her on Gabriel’s win one day when he’d supposedly gone to play ball.

“The butcher didn’t know my old lady didn’t know, he thought that after such a long time he already knew. He sent me to the front. And my old lady waited for me to come home from college and she kicked me out of the house. And when my brother came, she kicked him out too accomplice. I went to my girlfriend’s house for two or three days and then she came looking for me and she said: “Your Father Wants You Back”. she never told me ‘I’m back’. When I returned he made me promise and swear on the Holy Gospels that I would never run again. Of course I swore to him. I swore at him again knowing he wouldn’t respect it. I continued to race in the Zonali, I emerged as a champion and when I switched from the Fiat 600 to the Nazionale Turismo there was no other choice, because I already lived more elsewhere than there,” he explains.

Over time, Rex He says his mother ended up “walking him to the races.” “But she went through a bad time, she suffered a lot. She started the race and started crying, I had the promoters take her away. She never overtook her because she didn’t want to but she accompanied me and also remained in camper with me And as all the mothers have told me ‘I run slowly’. But it was three or four years that my mother didn’t find out I was running, she now she would have found out after three minutes,” she recounts.

-When I went to national motorsports, I could have used my name. But I studied Marketing as well as Law and I wondered why sponsors gave me money if no one knew me. I came from being champion in the Zonals but nobody knew me. If I wear Rex I will definitely be attraction marketing until I get some results. Already at the first National Tourism competition, people wondered: “Who is Rex, why doesn’t he use his name?”. Nobody raced under a pseudonym at that time and the marketing part went well, because people looked for me at the racetrack with the intrigue of knowing who I was, on TV they focused a lot on me and my way of being, they were looking for what I needed advertising. But if you don’t win, you can’t back it, and in the first year I raced in Turismo Nacional I won, that helped me and it later became a registered trademark.

–I enjoyed being Rex twice as much. From my mother, I already knew that when I ran away it would be Rex. I’ve known this since I was 15. And it was a beautiful time in my life. I really enjoyed racing at the national level. My lifelong dream was to race in Turismo Carretera and when I achieved it in 2002, I couldn’t believe it. It took me five years from a Fiat 600 to a Turismo Carretera and nobody gave me anything or gave me a hitchhiker. I finished second in the TC Track – I lost by half a point for not going to two races because I didn’t have the budget – to be able to go to the TC. They beat me but I was able to race there and in TC2000, where I was in the three best individuals and made the top 10. I went through Turismo Nacional, TC Pista, where I fought for championships, and Top Race, which landed me in the top 10. I enjoyed it, it was a beautiful stage in my life. Now I’m in another, although I still do karting, where I often go with my son, who runs Argentino de Karting. And mind you I’m there again and I’m running two races this year.

Pilot X

Meteoro marked a generation, especially the one that grew up in the 70s and 80s in Argentina, both for the careers of the incredible (and futuristic for the time) March 5th as for those secret missions that the masked pilot performed. As well as Gabriel Adamoli was Rex in national motorsportthere was another person who chose the alter ego of Meteoro’s brother to bring the educational message of his driver: pilot x.

Although his real name remains reserved so as not to spoil the mystery, Pilot X emerged in 2010, during a visit of Top Race category pilots to a special education school in Río Hondo, attended only by Marcos Vázquez from Santiago. . The person in charge of the activity then proposed to the head teacher to wear a helmet and a fireproof suit that he had in the car. The reaction was so positive that he tried again at the racetrack museum with a contingent from a kindergarten, who ran to greet him when he saw it. “Hey, this is something”, sense. “No, you are crazy, who will know you, who are you, people will not give you a dance,” they answered.

“I started out very resilient. But it seemed to me that motorsport could leave something extra in the cities I traveled to. I also saw that in Argentina we were world champions in solidarity but we could give continuity to this, as well as for a specific event And in careers we could see what the need was in each city, but I didn’t want it to be done on behalf of anyone or anything. And I thought of Masked Runner, the brother of Speed ​​Racer, and the X-Pilot came to mind.. There are very few who really know who I am, I try to respect it to the letter because it is the essence of Pilot X”, he points out that in 2018 he received the Road Education Award granted by the Secretary of Transport of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires.

The mission that started in motorsport was transferred in 2019 to the initial training of schools: “For the first time I live from Pilot X, as if I were a singer. It wasn’t the same as winning as a marketing manager, but I wanted to fight that. I thought 2020 would be a good year, especially with the 10th anniversary, but the pandemic has arrived: no travel, no mass events.”

After a jobless 2020 but in which he continued to collaborate with talks in schools via Zoom, Piloto X was summoned by the government of the Province of Buenos Aires to tour the main spas on the Atlantic coast with his message of driving education. He gives four talks a day to groups of up to ten boys and girls, who learn the basics of pedestrians, passengers and drivers. “They really liked it and they want to do it in schools during the year, but in the future when everything goes back to normal because now the priority is another one”he hoped, at that moment, faced with a truncated future.