Pat Farmer at the South Pole : A World First !

Published on 19.01.2012 - Pole to Pole Run

6 April 2011 - 19 January 2012 : a complete Pole to Pole run

Ultra marathon runner Pat Farmer has arrived safely at the South Pole on 19 January 2012. He had left the North Pole on 6 April 2011 ; and since that date he hasn't stop running from one pole to the other - excepts for two almost impossible to run geographical zones : the Darien jungle and the very southern part of Chile.

Several attempts have been made in the previous years to travel from the Noth Pole to the South Pole but without success. We remember though the fantastic voyage -Pole to Pole 2000- initiated by professional guide Martyn Williams (one of the ANI founder) in 2000 who had enabled a group of young ones (8 people : a Canadian, a Korean, a South African, two Americans, an Argentinean, a Japanese and a Frenchman) to travel from NP to SP using many ways of travelling, foot, bike, kayak, etc. The expedition was a success but it was not a total run. And they departed from the magnetic North Pole not from the geograpical North Pole (see our coverage on our old antarctica.org website)

Pat Farmer has run probably more than 30.000 kil to achieve his goal : he had done this feat to raise funds for the Australian and International Red Cross. He had two or sometimes three vans behind him for the supplies and communication. That had allowed him to start every morning from the very geographical point he had stopped the night before.

So that means that Farmer has run almost the entire distance between the two poles ; that's an historical first that won't be repeated twice in the near future for sure.

Everyone now is expecting a complete analysis of this extraordinary voyage, to discover for instance the amount of the funds Farmer has actually raised for the Red Cross since his departure from North Pole in April 2011.