Monday, May 15th, 2006, 5:50 a.m. local time. That was the exact hour of glory when sportsman Maxime Chaya rooted the Lebanese and Bank Audi flags at 8,850 meters, the summit of Mount Everest. It was a landmark in Lebanese history as well as in the life of this athlete, who has been living the Bank’s motto “Grow Beyond Your Potential” since 2003. That was when Maxime took up the Seven Summits challenge: a three-year quest to climb the highest peak in each of the world’s continents, the last of which being Everest.

Today, Chaya - Corporate Ambassador of Bank Audi - is at the onset of a new journey, one that will put him to the test once more, and examine his tolerance and endurance.

In a press conference held on Thursday, October 18th, at the Bank Audi Plaza in Beirut, he announced to the press and media representatives his future challenges. The earliest of these will be a November-December’07 journey to the South Pole in Antarctica, the highest, driest, coldest, windiest and emptiest place on Earth. “Only an elite group of polar explorers have completed this journey from the coast of Antarctica to the Geographic South Pole, on foot,” said Maxime. “Even fewer have done it ‘unassisted and unsupported’ the way my three team members and I will attempt to. Each one of us will have to haul all his gear, food and fuel for the 65-day journey on a sled behind him.” This journey comes as part of a bigger project: “The Three Poles”, which began with Maxime’s successful ascent of Mount Everest, the Earth’s third pole, and will end with a trip to the North Pole in April 2009.

After Antarctica comes the star project on Bank Audi’s agenda with Maxime Chaya: “La Patrouille des Cèdres”, an international ski touring event to take place every year in Lebanon, starting March 2008. The audience warmly applauded as Maxime explained that this race is a younger version of the renowned “La Patrouille des Glaciers”, an annual Swiss tradition. The first edition of the race is scheduled to take place in the picturesque Lebanese Faqra/Faraya region, and will involve backcountry skiing with some 1500m of ascent. Participants from Lebanon and abroad will race in teams of two or three, climbing and descending the mountain peaks and technical passages on skis.

Chaya had opened the conference with the mention of the Everest Stamp: a postal stamp commemorating his historic ascent to Everest as a landmark achievement by a Lebanese national. The LL 3000 postal stamp first released in July 2007, reads in French and Arabic: “Maxime Chaya raises the Lebanese flag on the summit of Mount Everest – May 15th, 2006”. It is currently available at all LibanPost offices, and will be a legal tender for postal use as of January 2nd 2008.

Finally, he expressed strong appreciation to Bank Audi, once the exclusive sponsor of his Seven Summits project, and now a faithful partner to such grand-scale projects which inspire determination and pursuit of clear, challenging objectives - the key to growing beyond one’s potential. “I want to tell the Lebanese community that they can aspire to the seemingly impossible, that there is an Everest for each one of us.”

Maxime Chaya will be filming these upcoming adventures as he has done in all his previous expeditions. He will be posting real-time photos and text from Antartica on www.thethreepoles.com, to allow people to somehow taste what it is like to be there.