Tokyo - A quiet retirement at home in Japan was never Yuichiro Miura's style. At 70, he became the oldest person to climb Mount Everest, and then he repeated the feat five years later.
Now at the age of 80, he intends to try to summit the 8 850m peak again, despite heart problems.
Success would put him back in the record books, after he was displaced by Nepalese Min Bahadur Sherchan, who reached the top at the age of 76 in 2008.
“This is the latest thing in anti-ageing,” a proud Miura says with a smile, ahead of his departure this week for Nepal. He says his key objective is not so much the record, but to face the challenge.
The test of “courage, endurance and the will to succeed” is what keeps him young at heart, he says.
Miura has long been fascinated by Everest. In 1970, he became the first person to ski down the mountain from a height of 8 000m.
A film was made of the descent, which he accomplished with the aid of a parachute that nearly cost him his life. The Man Who Skied Down Everest won the Academy Award for best documentary in 1976.
Miura is continuing a family tradition. At the age of 99, his father, Keizo, skied down Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps at 4 810m. He went on to live to 101, leaving his son not regarding himself as old.
“I've turned 20 for the fourth time,” he quips.
But he does have a heart rhythm problem, and underwent his fourth operation in January, leaving little time to prepare for his next Everest adventure.
“When I was 70, and exactly the same at 75, I asked myself whether I would manage it, but I tried and I did manage,” he says.
A 2009 skiing accident in which he broke his pelvis and right femur was unable to stop Miura from continuing to test his body to the limit. He first got the idea of climbing Everest at the age of 65, when most people start to take things easier.
“The most important thing is not to give up, even if you do have heart problems,” Miura told reporters while training in the heart of Tokyo.
He set up a room equipped with a running machine where the oxygen content of the air can be adjusted to correspond to an altitude of 6 000m.
Miura will be accompanied by his 43-year-old son Gota, an Olympic skier. Gota says his father is stronger than he was 10 years ago.
Miura regularly trains with weights on his ankles and back, even though his strenuous schedule has recently exacerbated his heart problem.
“I can take on the risk once more,” he insists, but this time he intends to take his time on the mountain, approaching things slowly.
True to form, Miura has another challenge lined up for after Everest. He said he plans to ski Cho Oyu, another Himalayan peak that rises more than 8 000m above sea level. - Sapa-dpa