Paralyzed US Athlete Reaches South Pole
Grant Korgan made history on Tuesday as he became the first ever adaptive athlete to reach the freezing South Pole.
Korgan is paralyzed from the waist down but used a sit-ski to push his way into the pole with a crew of other adventurers.
The group trained for the expedition for a year throughout various parts of the world and started its journey in Antarctica on Jan. 7.
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It took the group 11 days and massive endurance to make it into the freezing South Pole where temperatures routinely dip into the negative numbers.
Korgan amazingly used his chest and arms to push himself through and the challenging trek was completed on the 100th anniversary of British explorer Capt. Robert Falcon Scott’s journey to the South Pole.
“Although my body has been broken, my spirit will never be. I am unbreakable,” Korgan said in a statement posted on the crew’s Website.
Korgan’s exceptional journey will be part of a documentary called “The Push: A South Pole Adventure.”
“This is a historic day in the name of recovery, technology, adventure and the human potential,” director of the documentary film Steven Siig told the Associated Press.
Korgan, 33, was paralyzed two years ago when he got into an accident with a snowmobile, but has refused to allow his injury to halt his passion for being active.
“This is one of the many things I will do to recover from this injury. But the goal for myself is to gain all of my recovery back to 100 percent, and I am gunning for 120 percent,” the athlete told the Reno Gazette prior to his departure for the historic journey.
The journey was carried out as part of a fundraiser in which the group pursued $10 donations for each of the 250,000 pushes Korgan would have to make to reach the South Pole from Antarctica. The money will be given to the High Fives Non-Profit Foundation and to the Reeve-Irvine Research Center that carries out research on finding new spinal cord treatments for injured athletes.
