KEY POINTS:
OSLO - New Zealand's Ross Maxwell is among those prepared to risk frostbite and hundreds of miles of icy crevasses in a new international race to the South Pole nearly a century after Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen beat Britain's Robert Scott to reach it.
About 30 men and women will set off from the edge of the continent in teams of three on the 690km race in December. The trip is expected to take about 30 days for the fastest and 50 for the slowest, British organisers said.
They will ski and pull 70kg sledges behind them and camp out in tents. Dogs are not allowed.
So far contestants have signed up from Britain, Norway, New Zealand, Australia and Italy, Tony Martin, the race's British organiser, told reporters.
"I'm looking for an American and/or a Russian team," Martin told Reuters on the deck of the 1892 polar exploration ship "Fram", which carried Amundsen on his polar voyages and is now preserved in an Oslo museum.
"We will take 10 teams, I think. We have seven now," said Martin who also runs the Polar Challenge annual race to the North Pole. The entry fee is 42,300 pounds ($110,328) per head.
On the race's website New Zealand competitor Maxwell said the race was the "ultimate endurance and multi-skill challenge".
"Adventure and challenges have always inspired me to take the Kiwi approach of giving it a go," he said.
"New Zealanders have always had an association with the Southern Continent and growing up in a country that has Sir Edmund Hillary as a hero, is there a better event to take part in?".
Maxwell has represented New Zealand in team skydiving and also been involved in base jumping, scuba diving and ironman triathlons.
Though people of several nationalities will join, racers said it was hard not to see it primarily as a British-Norwegian rivalry and rerun of the race that Scott lost when he arrived at the South Pole in January 1912, a month after Amundsen.
Scott perished trying to return.
"All of us grew up reading the fantastic tales of Scott and Amundsen," said Ben Fogle, a British television presenter who will team up for the race with Olympic rowing medallist James Cracknell and a third team mate yet to be named.
The route, however is new and does not try to replicate those taken by Scott and Amundsen, Martin said.
Temperatures of minus 50degC, a relentless headwind from the pole and potentially deadly crevasses pose the biggest threats, Inge Solheim, a Norwegian guide who will train contestants, said.
"If they are not prepared, Antarctica will chew them up and spit them out," Solheim said. "It's going to be a tough race."
Solheim said it was impossible to guess who would win because enduring such extreme conditions depends crucially on attitude and organisation to preserve strength.
He said a three-woman Norwegian team could beat all the men if they proved to be best at those skills.
"The winner will be the ones with the best tent routines, the best organisation, because it is so important to get rest," Solheim said.
- REUTERS
