Here’s a story to brighten our dark January days. As a turbulent 2018 drew to a close, two men achieved what no-one has done before: they crossed the Antarctic continent from coast to coast, each alone, unsupported and unassisted. US adventure athlete Colin O’Brady and British Army Captain Louis Rudd set off on 3 November 2018 (one mile apart), each pulling a 150kg sled which included tent and sleeping bag as well as all food and fuel supplies for the two month journey. They braved 30-mile-an-hour headwinds, sub-40C temperatures and whiteouts, along with a treacherous terrain in which crevasses and ice waves posed constant danger. Crossing 940 miles, O’Brady reached his destination after 54 days on 26 December, Rudd two days later. Through the unimaginable physical and mental strain, they experienced moments of elation and awe. On day 40, O’Brady wrote:”SOUTH POLE!!! I made it!!! What a day. I expected to be happy reaching the South Pole, but today has quite honestly been one of the best days of my entire life.” And Rudd posted on day 53: “The sun came out; blue skies and then the peaks of the Transantarctic mountains, which I haven’t seen at all all day, but I knew were close, all lit up before me. It was fantastic.”

Both men, whilst obviously experienced and determined, were driven by deeply personal experiences. Rudd hoped to honour his late friend and mentor Henry Worsley, who attempted the traverse in 2016 but about 100 miles from the finish succumbed to an infection, from which he ultimately died. Rudd carried Worsley’s family crest flag on his journey.

O’Brady had suffered serious burn injuries to his legs as a youngster and has spoken widely about this early lesson in overcoming adversity through re-learning to walk, one step at a time. Since then, he has set himself, and achieved, many challenging adventure goals, including running a triathlon (which he won) and scaling each continent’s highest peak (which he did in record time). He has also set up a not-for-profit company through which he shares his experiences to inspire others. He talks of his desire to inspire “kids to dream big. … Set a goal, take the first steps, the chair is right in front of you. When you feel like giving up, put your boots back on.”

Despite these personal stories, the US and UK media were quick to frame the expeditions as a contest, “an epic race” between “dueling adventurers”. According to the National Geographic, “two men are dragging heavy sleds over the frozen continent’s forbidding landscape in an extreme duel to make exploration history.” The New York Times, which covered the expeditions in detail, described the men’s personal stories as well as the physical and mental challenges they had to endure but went on to suggest, “perhaps their greatest threat will be one another.”

By all accounts O’Brady’s late announcement that he would join Rudd came as a surprise. It is probably fair to speculate that O’Brady, having identified the Antarctic traverse as his next goal, wanted to give himself a chance of being the first to achieve it, and that he was – in part – motivated by the prospect of winning. And for the papers, this provided added drama. When O’Brady completed his crossing, he had not only defeated the elements and the odds, but his rival: “American Colin O’Brady pips Brit Louis Rudd to claim historic polar victory”.

The media hype was fuelled by obvious parallels to the race to the South Pole over a century ago: “an Antarctic competition is once again captivating the world.” According to the FT, “[t]he result carries a 21st-century echo of the 1911 race to the Pole between Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott — this time the defeated Briton arriving not to find a flag but his American rival’s (presumably smiling) face.”

Amundsen and Scott’s race was a story of both triumph and disaster. In 1911, both Roald Amundsen of Norway and Robert Falcon Scott of Britain set out to be the first to reach the South Pole. Amundsen reached the Pole first, leaving Scott bitterly disappointed to see the Norwegian flag marking the Pole when he arrived a month later. Much more tragically, Scott and his expedition team perished on the way back having run out of supplies, only 11 miles from their re-supply cache.

Amundsen’s victory has been ascribed to a range of factors. He was completely focused on the simple goal of being the first to reach the South Pole, whereas Scott had a broader agenda including scientific discovery. Scott was subject to high expectations and media interest, whereas Amundsen was careful to plan his expedition in secret (whilst pretending to plan a journey to the Arctic), not wanting to risk a diplomatic or political confrontation. Amundsen carefully picked a small team to accompany him, whereas Scott had a much larger party, including an army Captain who proved to be a challenge to Scott’s authority as leader. As a Norwegian Amundsen had much greater experience of operating in cold climates, and particularly of skiing. He also looked to Inuit expertise to inform his choice of clothing, including wolf-skin suits, and his team developed fuel caps that would prevent any loss of fuel. Nutritionally, Amudsen’s team gained a big advantage by eating fresh seal and penguin meat which supplied vitamin C. These differences gave Amundsen a clear advantage.

Some have also claimed that it was Amundsen’s competitive focus – his desire to reach the South Pole first – that helped him win. But there is another way of looking at it.

While Amundsen was focused on his task, Scott was, arguably, more driven by his ego. Amundsen was obsessed with polar travel and his childhood dream was to reach the Pole first. When describing his experiences, however, he recorded the minutiae of his expeditions and the lessons learnt, rather than any historic or global significance of his achievements. This was reflected in his ongoing efforts to make incremental improvements to his equipment, for example. Scott, by contrast, was driven by a desire to set himself apart from his contemporaries, to make history. Being the first to reach the South Pole was a means to an end. He did not actively enjoy the day-to-day of polar travel. Team members were seen as potential rivals.[1]

Scott accomplished a great deal and was no doubt incredibly driven; but in the end, the lack of focus on – and interest in – the details of the task arguably cost him and his companions their lives.

Yes, Amundsen wanted to be the first. But fundamentally, he was driven by an intrinsic passion for polar travel in a personal quest to which the outside world had little relevance. He found pleasure in the journey itself. By focusing on the task rather than the race, he pushed the boundaries of his personal capacity and expertise to achieve something extraordinary.

Despite the media’s attempts to portray Rudd and O’Brady’s Antarctic adventure as a race, both men in their different and unique ways reflect Amundsen’s legacy rather than Scott’s.

We’ve seen that both saw the expedition in one sense as an opportunity to come to terms with, and move on from, personal painful experiences. Much as these experiences propelled both men, they were also pulled by goals they had established in a very personal way, driven by a genuine passion for polar exploration and adventure.

Rudd was clear from the start that he saw the journey as his personal challenge rather than a race. “I didn’t want to get drawn into a race. I knew the expedition would be difficult enough as it was,” he said. “All that mattered to me was that I completed it, that I skied solo and unsupported, carrying the flag with Henry’s family crest.” When O’Brady overtook Rudd on day 6 and eventually disappeared from sight, Rudd commented: “It’s actually a good thing for both of us—we want to do be doing our own separate solo journeys… Now I can just focus on my expedition, my journey, and kind of do it my way. That’s what I came here for.” Further on he reflected, “the minute you get drawn into a race scenario, everything you’re doing is dictated by the other person. You’re having to react. It changes the whole nature of the expedition. You put yourself under a lot of pressure and I decided right from the early stages I wasn’t going to get drawn into that, and I was just going to do my expedition, and not let anything else interfere with that. I’m really pleased that that’s what I’ve done. I haven’t [been] reacting. I’ve just come and done my journey.” And on reaching the finish he sums up his accomplishment: “It’s a minor miracle that both of us actually completed this; the odds of both of us doing it were so slim. … What matters is that I’ve completed my expedition, and that’s the bit that’s really important to me.”

With O’Brady, it is tempting to characterise him, as some have done, as a “showman” who cares more about the supposed glory of winning than the goal itself. O’Brady has been keen to promote his story and accomplishments on social media and his TEDx talk last year has attracted almost 1.4m viewers. He labelled his expedition “The Impossible First” and has admitted, “yes, certainly, having him out here was pushing me to want to be the first one to cross the finish line. And I’m certainly proud that I did that.”

And yet he was keen to cast his and Rudd’s journey as a joint achievement:“But I was also extraordinarily excited to [see] him across the finish line safe and sound. And I think he summed it up really well when he said to me, like – he’s like, wow. People have trying this project for so many years. It’s amazing that, in the same season, both of us were able to complete it in a couple of days.”

Ultimately O’Brady subsumed his accomplishment into a greater story of human achievement, “standing on the shoulders of giants”. He said, “It has been an honor to strive for the same goal – the first to complete a solo, unsupported, unaided crossing of Antarctica. I’m looking forward to greeting [Rudd] here at the finish line and congratulating him on his extraordinary accomplishment. We will step into the history books together as the only two people to have completed such a crossing.
There is a lineage of explorers who have come before me that gave me great inspiration to complete my quest. The Impossible First project is simply me standing on their shoulders. Without them paving the way for what was possible, I never could have done this.”

Both O’Brady and Rudd exemplify an approach to life which is about setting personal goals and meeting personal challenges, about seeking and developing our own individual full potential. Being the first, or better than others, may be part of that; but it becomes incidental when you view your efforts as part of a greater whole with the aim of inspiring others and making your contribution to human accomplishment. As Rudd says, “[Colin and I pushed] the boundaries of what is possible in truly unsupported polar travel, stretched the limits of human physical performance and lay a marker in the snow, … what we have done is show what is possible”.

And even if we take a more cynical view of O’Brady’s motivation, he manages to look  beyond the race: “Hopefully my project inspires others to push the envelope even further. I’m looking forward to cheering others on as we continue to push the limits of human potential in the polar regions and beyond.“ More than that, he wants to inspire others to push and achieve their own personal aspirations and goals. Referring to Paul Simon’s 1986 album Graceland, which accompanied him on his trip, he says:”Day by day I work to try to finish the quest to put my own “Graceland” into the world, not for personal glory but so that many others in the world can use it as an example to strive to do the same in their lives.”

This was not about winning. O’Brady reached his goal two days before Rudd. But would anyone seriously argue that this diminishes Rudd’s achievement? Maybe the real question is why the media was so keen to frame it in this way. Arguably a race adds drama and excitement; but in the end both men’s stories proved worth telling in their own right. Ultimately these are personal stories of perseverance and triumph. Both succeeded in their own unique ways. As Rudd said on day 50 of his trek: “I’m carrying Henry’s flag, his family crest flag, that Joanna has very kindly lent me, that he carried on all his journeys, and it’s really important to me that, this time, the flag goes all the way, and completes the journey right to the end. And it will.”

Notes

(1) The argument is developed in some detail by John G. Nicholls (1989) in “The Competitive Ethos and Democratic Education”. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts. London, England.