On Thin Ice

What a rather good series this turned out to be.  Despite my suspicion that the three Brits, James Cracknell, Ben Fogle and Dr Ed Coats were not going to see the end of the race via their own amazing efforts, they did just that.

The one downside of the show was the total focus on the British team.  There were other teams in the race and we have no real clue how any of them did beyond the Norwegian army team.

We only know how the Norwegian’s did to the extent that they beat the Brits, who came in an amazing second place.

Thankfully there was not a lot of gum flapping about global warming which so often blights these programs nowadays and often appears to be the latest excuse by which to hang an arctic jolly.

There is a long history of “science” being the cover for arctic wanderings.

The three blubbing brits (they all had a good cry in this episode at one time or another) pushed themselves beyond expected limits to reach the finish.

James Cracknell pushed himself beyond medical limits it seemed at the time and should be more thankful than he appeared to be that Dr Ed Coats was there to minister to him.

Cracknell (Olympic rowing hero, gold medallist) did not come out of the last two episodes very well.  Clearly very driven he was unsympathetic towards his team-mates and took some quite amazing risks.  It put the team under more stress than was needed and upset the other two.

Apart from taking significant risks with his health, he also decided to go across a crevice field un-roped.  Ben an Ed could not get the rope on fast enough as James skied off.

How much James’s sheer will to win kept the team going and how much it hampered their efforts to complete is difficult to say.  Certainly James was the most ill when finishing.  Asthma, Pneumonia in one lung, feet blistered to ribbons and infected, frostbitten finger were just the most obvious physical ailments.

The other two by contrast seemed largely just sick of him most of the time.

Cracknell failed to look after himself and by extension failed to look after his team.  He was simply driven to win a race that they had lost pretty much the moment the Norwegian’s glided past them early in the race.

The driven, head down bully and shove approach did get him to the Pole, but it was at a considerable cost.  The Norwegians by contrast seemed perfectly at home in what amounts to their natural habitat.

Ben did a piece to camera concerning James’s frostbitten finger.  In Britain it is some sort of badge of honour, a demonstration of the hardships endured when you come back frostbitten to hell facing possible amputation.   In Norway you are just considered an idiot.  Shortly afterwards Ben was rubbing unctuous  stuff into the end of his frostbitten nose.

Dr Ed Coats did every step of the way with them, helped James’s with his various ailments and remained by and large in good spirits it seemed.  His rewards for doing so are largely what he takes away from the experience.  Which is fortunate because most of the time he barely gets a mention in the TV write-ups and seemed to have very much been the spare wheel in terms of TV time he got.  James’s spent most of the camera time complaining about the good Doctors poor attitude while he himself either waved his rotting feet in his face for patching up, or was slumped over his ski-poles.

Essentially this seemed to be the usual English amateur polar venture that by sheer willpower and a good deal of good fortune got to the Pole in second place.  The potential for suffering is why we watched.

What did I learn?

I liked Ben Fogle more than I thought.

Celebrity, however mundane appears to be more significant than achievement, however great.  Evidence being the bizarre focus on two of the three people in the tent.

Determination to succeed is more important than the physical attributes to succeed.  Evidence of this being the highly driven Cracknell basically drove himself into the ground.  Whereas the rather less prepared Fogle (flesh eating disease and laying in bed) and Coats, a late arrival to the team, appeared to do rather much better.

To extend this, “bully and shove” gets you part of the way there, your feet get you the rest.  Everyone should realise, looking after your feet (and by extension the rest of you) is the way you get to your goals.  Pushing yourself to your limits is recipe for fail-sauce.  In one of the episodes an ex-SAS chap training them pointed this out, making special effort to point it out to Cracknell.

Being quick to find fault in others is a fault in oneself.  It also fails serves to highlight the fact you are probably making more mistakes than most.  It fractures rather than builds the team and weakens everything as a result.

Me, I loved watching every moment and now looking forward to reading the book, which hopefully will fill in some of the blanks on the map.