On New Year’s Day, Christian Hillkirk, 47, and two teammates will set off across 500 miles of snow and ice in the first race of its kind to the South Pole since the fateful clash between Roald Amundsen and Captain Robert Falcon Scott. In appalling weather conditions, Scott and the other four members of his team perished on the return leg of their journey in 1912. Amundsen returned to his native Norway a hero.

This is the rematch in which Hillkirk and his team will hope to beat Amundsen’s modern-day counterparts (racing as Team Missing Link of Norway). Four other teams will also be vying for victory, including one led by James Cracknell, the former Olympic rower, and Ben Fogle, the reality star turned television presenter.

The race will take up to six weeks and – like their forebears – the competitors will have no mechanical aids to assist them across the world’s biggest expanse of ice, though they will carry satellite phones.

For anyone who has ever imagined swapping paperwork for life at the limits, the Amundsen Omega 3 Polar Race is the ultimate adventure. On a normal day, Hillkirk is in his office swivel chair by 8am, phone clamped to one ear, fingers punching his computer keyboard as he tries to chart a course through the market mayhem. This morning the City trader will be staring through snow goggles and trying to adjust to temperatures of -50C. Like Scott’s ill-fated expedition, Hillkirk and his team will have to fend off frostbite, snow blindness and dehydration, not to mention mental and physical exhaustion. Each competitor will be pulling more than 15 stone of clothing, shelter and supplies, on a sledge attached by a lead around their waist.

The harsh conditions mean Hillkirk and his team will cover only between 15 and 18 miles in each 12-hour day. They will need to take on several thousand calories every 24 hours to keep them going while they fight through harsh, biting winds, and try not to fall into any of Antarctica’s many crevasses; huge, hidden fissures in the ice that can be hundreds of feet deep.

Though the challenge recalls Amundsen and Scott’s expeditions, the race route starts from a point on the opposite side of Antarctica. The teams have already flown in from Cape Town to the Russian base of Novo where they have a few days to acclimatise. The first leg of the race is a steady 250-mile climb up the polar plateau to the first checkpoint at 9,900ft altitude. From there they will trek another 250 miles to the geographical South Pole at an altitude of about 9,000ft.

The teams are expected to complete each leg in 15-25 days, though everything depends on the weather, particularly the wind. The fastest team could reach the Pole by the end of January; the slowest could still be trudging through the snow and ice in mid-February.

Hillkirk, who works in the London office of Denmark’s Danske Bank, which is also his team’s sponsor, was persuaded to sign up for the £45,000ahead challenge 12 months ago by a friend. He travelled to Norway to take part in the selection process. “Nothing makes me happier than being in cold environments,” he says. “Being stuck in an office is hard for me so this was a great opportunity.”

When his friend later dropped out, he decided to push ahead anyway. He signed up Gary Marshall, 48, an IT consultant from Cheshire, whom he met at the selection event, but who had not yet attracted enough sponsorship. Then they put the word about that they were looking for a third team member and recruited Gary Bullen, a 44-year-old former Royal Marine and fitness instructor from Falmouth in Cornwall.

At a makeshift training ground in Kent – a muddy field near his house – Hillkirk has spent many hours dragging a truck tyre around to prepare for the physical exertion of pulling his sledge. Bullen and Marshall had both previously competed in the Polar Challenge, an annual 320-mile trek to the North Pole. Hillkirk describes himself as a “polar virgin”, though he is a keen skier, experienced climber and a former British Army officer with the Green Howards.

He admits to slightly split loyalties, despite racing with a British team. He has lived in Britain since the 1980s, but spent much of his childhood in Norway. “I’m racing with a British team and sponsored by a Danish bank – my Norwegian mother would turn in her grave,” he jokes.

While Amundsen had to mix up his own waterproofing materials in a bucket in his back garden, the competitors in the 2009 polar race will benefit from a wealth of technology and specially adapted clothing, as well as the sort of support team that Scott could only have dreamt of.

Hillkirk and his rivals must call in their location twice a day on their satellite phones so their progress can be monitored. Failure to keep up will result in a team being forced to drop out to avoid the safety cover being too stretched. There is a back-up team of nine, composed of Tony Martin, the race organiser, four drivers, two doctors and two polar experts, travelling in four adapted 4x4s spread along the route. Fogle and Cracknell will also be followed by a film crew. A plane waits on stand-by at Novo in case ofemergency.

Replenishing lost energy will be a key factor in maintaining strength and speed. When Scott launched his doomed polar expedition, his team was poorly supplied and suffered from scurvy. “We know so much more about the body now, but the demands are still severe,” says Hillkirk. “We’ll use up something like 12,000 calories a day out there, but the body can only take on 8,000, so after three days you go through your fat layer and start consuming muscle.

“For that reason we’ll be snacking pretty much all the time on bags of nuts, cheese, sausages, wine gums, dried fruit and chocolate. The good news is you can happily consume up to a kilo of chocolate a day. We’ll each carry a Thermos of thick, hot soup as well. At night it’s freeze-dried meals – curry, beef, chicken, vegetables – which are brilliant and we’ll probably eat them two at a time.” During the past 12 months, Hillkirk and his teammates have been training alone, then meeting up once a month to bond and work through safety procedures. In July they travelled to Austria for crevasse training. “The point is to spot them from the contours and the change in shade on the surface,” says Hillkirk. “Navigating around them efficiently is going to be one of the keys to maintaining speed.”

I met the team earlier this month on their final training session in the UK as they prepared to head out to Antarctica, before the start of the race on Thursday. Watching grown men drag truck tyres around a field on the outskirts of Sevenoaks was peculiar to say the least, but Hillkirk insisted it was the most effective form of training he had found.

“Most of our day will be spent dragging 100kg [15½ stone] sledges behind us across ice, so dragging a heavy truck tyre around is good preparation,” he explains. “I remember the first time I took the tyre out to the countryside – I keeled over after half an hour. Now I can manage more than two hours.

There’s much more resistance on grass and mud than on ice so it helps develop great core strength.”

Other than that, Hillkirk says it has been a case of concentration, hard slog and trying not to think too much about his wife and two children curled up, cosy and warm, on the sofa back home.

“There’s nothing too technical about it,” he says. “The skiing is cross-country, not downhill. You need to put in a glide between steps where possible because it makes such a difference speed-wise. But more often than not, it’s basically a shuffle because of the sastrugi – the frozen ice waves that are very uneven. The cold is obviously a big challenge, but at least there’s no humidity, so it’s dry – there’s no damp permeating everything.”

Keen historians will note that the race is being undertaken entirely on foot – a key factor in Scott’s demise. Amundsen, conversely, brought with him 100 well-trained sled dogs to ferry him to his destination and back. Everything was meticulously prepared because the Norwegian explorer considered that unforeseen incidents were failures of planning. Adventures should be carefully scripted, he believed, a trait that may have given him the edge over his British rival. “Victory,” declared Amundsen, “awaits him who has everything in order – luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck.”

Hillkirk has taken heed of history. “The race rules insist that all the teams travel on foot but, on the plus side, the route is much easier than Scott’s and the gear we’re using is much more technically advanced.

“One of the guys in my office actually gave me an original book written in 1923 by Rear-Admiral Evans, who was one of Scott’s assistants on the trip. I’ve read the contemporary accounts, but this is brilliant because he details all the practical issues that bothered them. It’s amazing Scott got as far as he did.”

Christian Hillkirk is walking in aid of www.hospicesofhope.co.uk.

You can follow the race at www.amundsenomega3southpolerace.com

ICE WARRIORS

DANSKE BANK (UK)

Christian Hillkirk, 47, a trader in the City, is a former army officer, experienced climber and expert skier

Gary Bullen, 44, from Falmouth, Cornwall, worked as a fitness instructor with the Royal Marines until last year and took part in the Polar Challenge, a 320-mile race to the North Pole, in 2005

Gary Marshall, 48, is an IT consultant from Cheshire, as well as an experienced triathlete. He completed the Polar Challenges in 2006 and 2007

QINETIQ (UK)

Ben Fogle, 35, took part in the BBC’s Castaway 2000 reality show and is now a television presenter. He has just recovered from a tropical illness contracted while filming in the Peruvian jungle

James Cracknell, 36, from London, is a two-time Olympic gold medallist rower. In 2005-6, he rowed across the Atlantic with Fogle

Ed Coats, 28, from Bristol, is a doctor who once represented Britain as a decathlete

SOUTHPOLEFLAG. COM (Northern Ireland and Ireland)

Mark Pollock, 32, from Northern Ireland, went blind when he was 22. He has since won medals for rowing at the 2002 Commonwealth Games and completed six marathons in one week in the Gobi desert

Simon O’Donnell, 33, from Dublin, is a full-time rugby coach with a qualification in adventure management

MISSING LINK (Norway)

Rune Malterud, 27, serves in the Norwegian army and is a keen mountain climber and long-distance skier

Stian Aker, 28, also a soldier, enjoys climbing and kayaking

DUE SOUTH (UK)

James Hylton, 42, is a business analyst originally from South Africa, now living in London. He has completed 118 marathons and ultra-marathons

Rachel Andrews, 41, is a physiotherapist from Plymouth. Rowed for England in the 1999 Commonwealth Games and is an experienced mountain climber

Phil Hayday-Brown, 39, from Gloucestershire, works for an adventure travel company and has been part of the support team for the Polar Challenge for five years

SOUTHERN LIGHTS (UK)

Peter Hammond, 62, from Sussex, worked in insurance but is now a mountaineering instructor

Tess Burrows, 60, from Surrey, is an author and climbing instructor who enjoys cycling, running and parachuting