My Sportsman Choice: Pemba Dorji Sherpa

By Rick Lipsey

Pemba Dorji Sherpa's world-record climb of Mt. Everest was a mind-blowing feat. AP  Chris Stone: Red Sox Nation, you've earned this one  Paul Zimmerman: Boy Wonder brought Boston a title  B.J. Schecter: Red Sox captured Boston's heart  Richard Deitsch: The Babe had a big presence in '04  Rick Reilly: Big Papi did it all for the world champs  Jeffri Chadiha: A reward for reversing The Curse  Lisa Altobelli: Ramirez never took anything seriously  • Sportsman of the Year archive

The four-minute mile? Seven gold medals at the Olympics? Hitting .400 in a baseball season? Child's play, all of it, when you compare those and most of the other supposedly Herculean feats American sports fans love. At least when compared to what Pemba Dorji Sherpa did this past May. On a crystal clear night in the Himalayas, Pemba, a 27-year-old Nepalese sherpa, set a world record by becoming the fastest person to climb Mt. Everest in a time of eight hours and 10 minutes.

This was not some trivial Everest record. Pemba's feat was mind-jarring. He left the 17,500-foot base camp at 6:00 p.m. on May 20th, and using supplemental oxygen, he reached the 29,023-foot summit at 2:10 a.m. the following day. Afterward, Pemba's comments were the understatement of the century. "Luck was on my side," he said. "The weather was warm and the wind blowing mildly."

So why should Pemba be SI's Sportsman of the Year? I've trekked in the Himalayas and seen Everest from afar, and it's preposterously unimaginable to imagine a human going from base camp to the summit so fast. During the first ascent of Everest in 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa took seven weeks to reach the summit. O.K., Hillary had prehistoric gear and bad maps. But today the best climbers take a minimum of four days -- that's 96 hours -- to navigate the treacherous and often deadly trail to Everest's summit.

Let's put Pemba's climb in perspective: He's 12 times faster than the next best climbers. In his best season, Tiger Woods won nine tournaments, and the second biggest winner took four titles. Thus, Woods was about twice as good as his nearest rival. Was Muhammad Ali 12 times better than Joe Frazier? Is Lance Armstrong 12 times better than the other Tour de France riders? Not even close.

Here's something else to factor into Pemba's remarkable effort: There was a real chance he'd die during his attempt. For every six people who've reached Everest's summit, one climber has died trying. Also, Pemba wasn't gunning for the record for fame or fortune. He climbed alone, without a single TV camera or reporter in tow -- and he wasn't getting paid. His only financial incentive was that breaking the record would make it easier in the future to get sherpa jobs. And those jobs can pay up to a few thousand dollars -- a princely sum in a nation where the average annual per capita income is $240. As if all that isn't admirable enough, Pemba's ascent was his second trip to the top of the world in less than a week. Just days before his record-making climb, Pemba had led a Swiss economist to the peak. That climb paid the bills. The next climb made history and satisfied his heart.

Sports Illustrated will announce the 2004 Sportsman of the Year winner on FOX on November 28. Check back every weekday until then to read more Sportsman picks from SI writers.