USTA's team spirit and leadership.

During the general session we attended in the morning hosted by Patrick Galbraith, president of the USTA, we listened to an interesting story telling by Ed Viesturs.

He is the only American to have climbed all 14 of the world's eight-thousander mountain peaks and is one of a very few to have done it without any oxygen.

Why did the USTA call Ed Viesturs ? How can mountaineering be related to tennis and why relate these two sports ?

First of all, Ed talked about his life and his career as a professional mountaineer and his passion about mountains. It all started with the book « Annapurna », he read this book and it gave him the love and the ambition to be a professional mountaineer. This book even became his life goal as he decided to climb every mount of Annapurna. He studied for 10 years to learn how to climb these kind of mountains and then for the past 30 years he has been climbing all around the world.

Patience and long term vision are 2 of the best qualities Ed has, it may be easy to say, but these 2 assets are what makes him one of the best in his field.

Mount Everest was his first goal and he made everything possible to achieve it. 10 months of studying the mountain, anticipating any future problems, logistics and organisation. it is a potentially dangers scenario, it’s not like simply taking your back pack and climbing.

The more you climb, the tougher it gets, you have to be ready physically, but also mentally. Rule number one is to always listen to the mountains, he says.

Indeed, a lot of mountaineers invest time and money in order to achieve their goals, the pressure is difficult to handle and they have their team, their sponsors, their family on their back. But the problem is, they let these external situations effect their climbing by taking much more risks than they should…

Ed always respected his number one rule : « Always listen to the mountains ». If the weather is awful, then you have to wait and not force the situation to keep going by taking risks. If you are not patient, then you risk your life and obviously, the goal is to succeed by climbing to the sommet, but it’s also to stay alive. It doesn’t matter how hard you train, how skilled you are, how amazing you are, the mountains will always be tougher than you and they will decide if you are allowed to climb, or not, if you have to go back down from where you came. The mountain always decides.

During Ed’s studies on the mountains, he moved to Seattle because it’s a great city with lots of mountains with similar weather conditions that simulate climbing Mount Everest conditions . He worked as a guide for a few years in the Seattle mountains. He learnt so much because aside from climbing all day, he was going up with more experienced mountaineers that taught him some important lessons. He was the guide, but he was also learning from the athletes.

A few years after, he decided to climb Mount Everest. He learned everything about this climb, the history, people that succeeded, the time they took, the weather, every obstacle…

In 1953, a british team succeeded to climb the mount but they did it with oxygen supplements and every other team then used this technique to do it.

But Ed didn’t what to do it this way, he wanted to do it without any oxygen supplements and try to challenge himself even if it’s much more difficult.

We don’t think about it a lot but logistics and how to organise this kind of challenge are really impressive. They gathered up a team of 8 athletes and go up step by step. 8 to 10 weeks to go from the bottom to base camp 1 and they had to set up multiple camps throughout the journey. There were a total of 4 camps arriving to the summet.

Ed was the leader and did a lot of back and fourth between camps to supply food and drink and whatever was needed to survive. Once again, he had to be extremely patient. From the last base camp to the top of the mount, only 2 people could go to the very top.

That’s why it’s very important to have good teammates and social skills in order to decide who will be the 2 heroes that will take the journey to the summet. Ed was one of them. He had a lot of pressure because he was going to determine if the journey was successful, everyone counted on him and he had to finish the job.

The first time he tried, the weather was really bad so he remembered his number one rule to always listen to the mountains and he listened to his instinct and turned around and did not continue to climb up. The third time he tried, he finally did it and was on the top of the Mount Everest. 15 breaths just to do one single step, that was the level of difficulty he had to deal with at the end.

It was even harder as his teammate couldn’t go up anymore and Ed was on his own. 12 hours of concentration and perseverance, it was a massive success. He says it's important to get comfortable to be inconfortable

Mr. Viesturs told us about his journey to climb the K2, one the most difficult mountain to climb with terrible weather on a daily basis. During this trip, Ed and his colleague were once trapped in a very small tent for about 3 days without being able to go out due to all the snow. He reminded us the importance of choosing whom ever you work with as it can decide on how successful you can be.

Their trip to climb the K2 was a success and once again, it was a success because Ed and his teammate listened to the mountains and did not force anything.

After that, Ed Viesturs had a long term goal that was to climb the top 14 highest mountains in the the world.

The irony was that Ed climbed 13 of these leaving the last one to be… Annapurna.

The first book and mountain he knew about that gave him the love of being a mountaineer. 180 athletes tried to climb the Annapurna, 60 died trying… 17 years after, Ed succeeded and achieved his goal of climbing all 14 mountains.

He associated this metaphor on our lives with mountains. One year you climb a mountain, the next year you aim for a higher one. Sometimes you win, sometimes you loose and you have to know when to be patient but also to never ever give up. Exactly like your life.

He insisted on the key factor, to be passionate about what you do and know how to attract and have good people around you. No matter what, passion will always get you to continue and succeed eventually.

Usually, what happens in the morning dictates your day. This conference we had at 8am dictated our whole day through the passion and inspiration Ed gave us. It’s important to be positive and be inspired at the beginning of the day.

That’s why it was a brilliant idea from the USTA to motivate and inspire everyone in the room from the beginning of the day. Everyone works very hard in order for the US OPEN to be successful, it’s a great idea to increase the good work by planning conferences like this.