On 27th December 2018, after 54 days without any help, American Colin O’Brady, 33 years old, managed to complete this feat of travelling across Antarctica all on his own. The area consists of more than 1,600 kilometres of empty, frozen land without any trace of humanity.
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On 29th December, 56 days after the expedition started, his fellow British adventurer Louis Rudd, 49 years old, achieved the same goal, putting an end to the most epic polar competition since Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott’s South Pole expedition in 1911.
Whilst the Englishman was once ahead of him, it was his ‘rival’ Colin O’Brady who finished this crazy race in first place after he trudged out the last 125 kilometres in one last 32-hour push without sleeping.
‘I just felt locked in for the last 32 hours […] like I’m going until I’m done,’ Colin O’Brady said about his expedition in a telephone interview with the New York Times.
‘From the moment I laced up my boots, this impossible plan became a specific goal.’
Both equipped with cross country skis, the two men left from a campsite at Union Glacer together but then separated during the weeks of intense snow in the Antarctic, pulling their own pulka – a type of sled used to transport all their provisions and equipment – which weighed around 180 kilos.
Although they both undoubtedly achieved an amazing physical accomplishment, this isn’t Colin O’Brady’s first record. In 2016, this former professional athlete climbed the highest peaks in the seven continents in 132 days, including Everest, which allowed him to earn the title of the faster ‘climber of the seven summits’.
Check out the video above for more on their extraordinary adventure!
