A unprecedented battle for mountaineering supremacy has begun on the slopes of the world's highest peak after an 80-year-old Japanese man became the oldest person to reach the summit of Mount Everest days before his Nepalese rival attempts the feat at the age of 81.
Yuichiro Miura, who has undergone four rounds of heart surgery, reached the top of the 8,848-metre (29,028ft) mountain at 9am local time on Thursday, according to reports from the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu.
Miura, a fearless adventurer who skied down the mountain from the South Col in 1970, said he felt great after reaching the summit via the south-east ridge route established by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay six decades ago.
"I made it!" Miura said in a phone call from the summit to his home in Japan that was captured by the broadcaster NHK. "I never imagined I could make it to the top of Mount Everest at age 80. This is the world's best feeling, although I'm totally exhausted. Even at 80, I can still do quite well."
But Miura could soon see his achievement surpassed by a fellow octogenarian whose record he beat this morning.
As the Japanese climber celebrated, 81-year-old Min Bahadur Sherchan, who set the previous record when he climbed Everest aged 76 in 2008, was at base camp preparing his own assault on the peak early next week.
Miura's successful ascent has reignited a rivalry that has captivated the climbing world since the pair arrived on the summit within a day of each other in 2008.
Miura reached the summit on 26 May that year aged 75 years and 227 days, according to the Guinness Book of Records; but Sherchan had reached the top a day earlier, aged 76 and 340 days.
Sherchan, a former Gurkha, is reportedly on schedule to begin his attempt, despite recently suffering from a digestive complaint.
"Our team leader has just arrived back at base camp and we are holding a team meeting on when exactly I will head up to the summit," he said in a phone call. "I am fine and in good health. I am ready to take up the challenge. Our plan is to reach the summit within one week."
Miura, however, tried to play down his rivalry with Sherchan. "The record is not so important to me," he said last month. "It is important to get to the top."
Whichever man appears in the record books once Sherchan has completed his attempt, both have a long list of mountaineering milestones to their name.
Miura climbed Everest in 2003, at the age of 70, and again in 2008. By 1985, he had skied down the highest mountains on all seven continents, a feat achieved by his late father, Keizo, who skied down Mont Blanc when he was 99. The younger Miura has also descended Mount Fuji on skis, aided by parachutes.
Sherchan, whose only obvious concession to age is the use of a hearing aid, began his career more than 50 years ago when he climbed the 8,166-metre (26,790ft) Mount Dhaulagiri in Nepal. He walked the entire length of the country in 2003.
By Wednesday, Miura, accompanied by three other Japanese climbers, including his son, Gota, and six Nepalese sherpas, had reached a steep, icy area lacking in oxygen known as the "death zone".
Writing on his website before he reached the summit, Miura said he was making the climb to "challenge [my] own ultimate limit. It is to honour the great mother nature.
"And if the limit of age 80 is at the summit of Mount Everest, the highest place on Earth, one can never be happier." Miura's compatriot, Tamae Watanabe, became the world's oldest woman to climb Everest at the age of 73 in 2012.
Miura's ascent has been the subject of widespread media coverage in Japan. A recent broadcast included photographs of the climber and his team drinking green tea and eating sushi in their tent.
As he prepares to disappoint Miura a second time, Sherchan's biggest challenger could be the mountain's notoriously unstable weather, with the favourable conditions that helped the Japanese adventurer to the top on Thursday expected to deteriorate from Friday.
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
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