Race to the South Pole
Rob Howard / 07.01.2009
Over Christmas and New Year 6 teams were travelling, training, preparing and waiting out bad weather in Antartica ahead of the Amundsen Omega 3 South Pole Race, said to be the first race to the South Pole since that between Scott and Amundsen in 1911.There are British and Norwegian racers in this modern race too, which sets the challenge to travel 483 miles across some of the most inhospitable terrain on earth, survive in temperatures as low as - 50C degrees, navigate, ski and pull 70kg pulks (sleds) and face tough climbs of up to 9300 ft in the race to get to the South Pole first.
Having departed on December 18th the teams have completed extensive safety training and the race began on January 4th when the blizzard conditions abated, allowing competitors to start under blue skies in –25C temperatures. (The race was due to start on New Year’s Day.) A support team had already driven ahead of them to the start line, a 1400km journey in its own right and a record for driving distance to the South Pole. On the sixth this team, who are pushing on ahead of the racers met the Norwegian Antarctic Research Expedition who are conducting a science survey in Antarctica. The odds of the two expeditions running into each other are very remote –they are the only trans Antarctic expeditions there this year, in a desolate place bigger than India and China put together!
The competitors include blind athlete Mark Pollock, in team South Pole Flag, and Team Qinetiq is made up of TV presenter Ben Fogle and Olympic gold medalist James Cracknell, racing with Ed Coats who applied to join them and was selected from 650 applicants. This team is currently in the lead having camped on the night of the 5th 10km ahead of Team Missing Link, but the pursuers made an early start to regain most of that distance and are pulling heavier pulks with more bad weather gear. Should the fine weather turn this tactic may yet prove to be the best.
The other teams are Due South, Danske Bank and Southern Lights and there is news from all of them on the event website, including audio diaries and satellite tracking, plus links to the Qinetiq team website and a Daily Telegraph site following the event which has some video clips.
