Australian runner Catherine Drysdale recorded an unprecedented achievement after becoming the first woman to win the Ice Marathon in Antarctica since the race was launched nearly 20 years ago.
She completed the race in a time of 3 hours, 48 minutes, and 43 seconds, according to the website Euronews.
Drysdale, 35, works as an investment portfolio manager in the city of Sydney. She managed to outperform a number of prominent runners taking part in the race, including Russian Denis Nazarov and Belgian Ronny Baillie, despite the harsh weather conditions that accompanied the competition.
The Ice Marathon was held on the Antarctic mainland, with athletes from 20 countries participating.
The race took place in the Union Glacier area, about 600 miles from the South Pole. The full marathon distance of 42.2 kilometers was run in temperatures that dropped to around minus 15 degrees Celsius, amid strong winds and compacted snow that made the competition even more challenging.
In a related context, a diving robot designed to study ice shelves in the eastern sector of Antarctica returned after a scientific mission that lasted nearly eight months beneath the ice in the Denman and Shackleton regions.
The robot carried unprecedented measurements that will help improve understanding of the impact of ice melt on future sea-level rise.
The Spanish newspaper ABC reported that the robot operated for more than two and a half years in extremely cold waters, collecting precise data on temperature, salinity, pressure, oxygen, pH levels, and nitrates.
Researchers described these data as opening new scientific horizons for studying areas that were previously difficult to access.
Reports explained that the most difficult phase of the mission occurred when the robot became trapped beneath ice shelves, preventing it from surfacing to transmit data via satellite.
Nevertheless, it continued operating successfully, recording a complete profile every five days, from the seabed up to the base of the ice.
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