Almost 100 years ago, two polar explor­ers set off on what would become one the most famous bat­tles in polar explo­ration.  The ill-fated Terra Nova Expe­di­tion set off in 1910 under the lead­er­ship of British Naval Offi­cer Cap­tain Robert Fal­con Scott in order to “to reach the South Pole, and to secure for the British Empire the hon­our of this achieve­ment”.  How­ever they were pipped to the post by Nor­we­gian Roald Amund­sen.  It was on the return jour­ney that Scott and his team per­ished.  Some of his last words were “had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardi­hood, endurance, and courage of my com­pan­ions which would have stirred the heart of every Eng­lish­man”.

Well, the Amund­sen Omega3 South Pole Race is the first time Scott and Amundsen’s race to the South Pole has been repeated.  Amongst the teams that began this epic adven­ture on the 3rd Jan­u­ary 2009 were Team Qine­tiQ com­pris­ing dou­ble Olympic Medal­list James Crack­nell, TV pre­sen­ter Ben Fogle and new­comer to the adven­tur­ing duo, Dr Ed Coates.

They started train­ing 18 months before the race, because if you’re going to tackle 430 miles on the arc­tic (affec­tion­ately known as “the con­ti­nent of pain”, you’re going to need to be very pre­pared.  Trav­el­ling by foot or skis and pulling 70kg pulks (sleds) at an aver­age 20 miles a day, this was not going to be easy, espe­cially as they would also have to con­tend with snow-blindness, frost­bite, blis­ters, chaf­ing, the odd mile-deep crevasses in tem­per­a­tures as low as –50C.

Team Qine­tiQ were in the lead at the start, but were unable to main­tain the lead and unfor­tu­nately his­tory repeated itself where they came sec­ond to Nor­weigan long dis­tance ski experts ‘Team Miss­ing Link’ by only 20 hours.  For­tu­nately, every­body returned to the safety of the camp.  How­ever, all the teams suf­fured minor ail­ments such as sprains, mus­cle aches, lit­tle bits of frost­nip, blis­ters, etc. but noth­ing too serious.

The race will be repeated next year in 2010 and the organ­is­ers are now recruit­ing team mem­bers.  More details can be found here.

The final posi­tions for 2009 were:

Miss­ing Link 19:03, 21st Jan­u­ary — 17 days 8 hours 58 min­utes
Qine­tiQ 15:15, 22nd Jan­u­ary — 18 days 5 hours 10 min­utes
Danske Bank 17:00, 24th Jan­u­ary — 20 days 6 hours 55 min­utes
Due South 16:10, 26th Jan­u­ary — 22 days 6 hours 5 min­utes
South Pole Flag 22:09, Jan­u­ary — 22 days 12 hours 4 minutes

Audio diaires from Qinet­icQ can be found here:

Ed Coates speak­ing for Team Qinet­icQ, 1 day before they finished

James Crack­nall leav­ing a mes­sage for his son

Ben Fogle talk­ing about their daily routine