There’s no Olympic gold for it, but a French climber has more than halved the K2 ascent speed record

While the French are enjoying gold-winning success as the hosts of the 2024 Olympics in Paris, another of their countrymen has performed a record-breaking superhuman feat half way across the world.

French climber Benjamin Vedrines has climbed K2 , the world’s second-highest mountain on the Chinese / Pakistan border, without the help of oxygen in just under 11 hours.

That more than halves the previous record of 23 hours, set by fellow Frenchman Benoît Chamoux on July 7, 1986.

Vedrines, 32 – who is well-known for his high-speed ascents unaided by oxygen – left the K2 base camp shortly after midnight on Saturday July 27, and reached the summit 10 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds later, his team told to AFP on Monday.

Vedrines attempted to break the record on a previous occasion in 2022, but had to give up when he fell victim to hypoxia, a condition caused by insufficient oxygen levels at high altitudes.

“From 8,000m, I slowed down because I was very worried about reliving the same situation as two years ago,” Vedrines admitted in an Instagram post . “It was a very symbolic climb for me, and I reviewed with complete lucidity the sections that sometimes appear in my flashbacks: I was able to observe and understand better. When I reached the summit, I have rarely felt emotions invade me like that on a mountain.”

The post also reveals, “There was the euphoria of setting off on the expedition, there was the wait at base camp, there were doubts with terrible weather conditions, there were last-minute imponderables, and then there was the summit of K2.”

Standing at 8,611m (28,251ft), K2 is 238m shorter than Everest but is considered technically more challenging, earning it the nickname “Savage Mountain”.

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