Solo and unassisted, Vincent Colliard reached the South Pole in 22 days and 6 hours on the 11th of January 2024, beating the previous record. “I fought very, very hard during this expedition. When I got to the South Pole, I couldn’t believe it was over.” Børge Ousland’s friend and heir, Vincent Colliard has just returned to his adopted home, Norway, to tell us all about his extraordinary Antarctic adventure.
It’s a small black dot on a white horizon. A single human being on the horizon, in a desert of snow and ice. On the 11th of January, Vincent Colliard has just a handful of hours left to complete his challenge. He has informed Cedar, the base manager at the South Pole, of his arrival. He looks through binoculars, then gradually sees Vincent approaching his goal. They fall into each other’s arms. It’s over: Vincent Colliard has reached the Pole faster than any of his predecessors. His first feeling? A mixture of joy and sorrow, emotions, relief and unreality, of someone reaching his goal and above all the world of the rare humans who live at 90 degrees south latitude.
It didn’t just take him twenty-two days to get there. It took a lot of experience, over fifteen years of expeditions and frequenting the polar and arctic worlds. It also took luck, but “you have to make your own luck“, says Vincent. When he set out on this challenge, the weather was not good. From