COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Hillary ready to share credit with Mallory

Forty-five years after conquering Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary today said he would be glad to share the credit for reaching the summit with George Mallory, who may have made it in 1924.

Members of an expedition, seeking to determine whether Mallory and fellow Englishman Andrew Irvine were the first to summit Mount Everest, said they have found Mallory's body near the peak.

Sir Edmund said he doubted whether Mallory and Irvine, who were not using oxygen, had reached the top.

''We simply have no idea as to whether he was overcome at that altitude, which could easily happen, or that he had in fact carried on, reached the summit and then fallen on the descent. My feeling perhaps is that, well, I think it is more likely that he probably did not reach the summit. But who knows?'' he said from Auckland in a telephone interview with an Australian radio station.

''It's one thing to reach the top, but to complete the job you've got to get (back) to the bottom,'' he told the Dominion, a New Zealand newspaper.

''For 45 years I've been accepted as the hero sort of stuff, so I wouldn't feel too terrible if he had his special spell as well. I've always regarded him with great admiration as the original hero of Everest.''

Sir Edmund told the BBC, ''Mallory has always been a heroic figure as far as I was concerned.''

He was really ''the initial pioneer of the whole idea of climbing Mount Everest and was pretty formidable at attempting to carry it through.''

He said that ''if evidence was found that he reached the summit, it would be very appropriate.''

''He was indeed the man of Everest in those early days,'' Sir Edmund said.

Mallory's grandson today said he believed his grandfather was descending when he fell, but had no opinion on whether he had reached the summit.

''I guess my opinion would depend very much on where exactly the body was found,'' said the younger George Mallory, who lives in Mooroopna in Australia's Victoria state.

''I can't imagine that he would have been on his way up at the time he died,'' said Mallory, who himself climbed Everest in 1995.

UNI

EXTERNAL LINKS:
Mallory's body may solve 1924 Everest riddle
Climbers find body of hobnail hero who may have been first up Everest

Tell us what you think of this report