R.I.P., Sir Edmund Hillary

By Spencer Hall
Sir Edmund Hillary never wanted fame or recognition--he seemingly just turned corners and kept walking into it. Hillary, the first man to summit Mount Everest, downplayed every achievement he ever made, but the tally of the man’s life is every bit as intimidating as the gentle man himself was not: first to summit the world’s tallest mountain, polar explorer, the Kiwi ambassador to India, and humanitarian. Did you do the laundry today? Of course you didn’t. Edmund Hillary would have starched clean whites in the closet and ironed by 9 a.m., and say it was nothing at all...and that would be after an eight mile morning run and phone call to the head of UNICEF.
His death at the age of 88 and its mention on a sports blog always invite the question: is mountain climbing a sport?
The answer, at least from my perspective, is wobbly: it depends. A sport requires some rules, physical trial, and competition. Mountain climbing has its rules, but they’re mostly community standards and not anything you’d write down. Big mountain climbing certainly sits on the far edge of the definition of sport: its suicidal risks, pace, and endless logistics put it in the field of what I’d call “endeavor” rather than “sport.”
If we’re discussing speed climbing, though--now that’s a sport. It has all of the hallmarks of what you would expect from something you could watch in a half hour slot on ESPN2: times, goals, competition in a racing format, easily digested in a half hour. If you decide to compete in speed climbing, I’d recommend using ropes just to make it safe for the kids. And sane mortals.

Sadly, Dan Osman, the climber in the video, proved to be all too mortal himself, though he managed to escape sanity to the end.↵