Two expert Pioneer teams raced to the South Pole in 1911. One team guessed wrong, and died.
TL;DR
Roald Amundsen reached the Pole on 14 December 1911 and walked home. Robert Falcon Scott arrived thirty-four days later, found the Norwegian flag already planted, and died on the way back along with his entire party.
The difference was not courage — Scott had that in quantity. The difference was a series of entirely reasonable decisions, nearly all of which were wrong.
A mostly undisputed story
This retelling is a common view, but not everyone agrees with every detail.
Both competitors left within 11 days of each other, from different locations.
It may seem funny for us, a hundred years later. We have seen so many disasters like it, in current times. It was not humorous at the time, because lives were lost.
Transport
Scott brought motor sledges. In 1911 this was not eccentric, it was forward-thinking. They broke. He also brought ponies, which had worked for other expeditions, and which sank into the snow. When both failed, his men pulled the sledges themselves, across Antarctica, on foot.
Amundsen brought dogs, which are good at snow, and which — being honest about it — could also be eaten if the arithmetic went badly.
Clothing
Scott's party wore layered wool and canvas, which is what a properly equipped expedition wore. It trapped sweat. At those temperatures the sweat froze, inside the clothes, against the men.
Amundsen wore loose Inuit furs, which let moisture out. He had asked people who lived there.
Calories
Scott's men burned roughly 6,000 a day and ate roughly 4,500. That arithmetic only runs in one direction, and it ran for months.
Amundsen packed pemmican, chocolate and fresh meat. The fresh meat carried vitamin C, which was not a happy accident.
Margin
Scott marked his depots with single cairns, and placed the crucial One Ton Depot thirty miles short of where it was meant to be. His last three men died eleven miles from it.
Amundsen planted black flags in lines running across his route, so a navigator who missed the point would still cross the line.
Why this is not quite a joke
Every one of those choices was defensible at the moment it was made. Motor sledges really were the coming thing. Ponies really had worked elsewhere. Wool really was what serious men wore. Nobody chose stupidly — they chose confidently, from the available options, using judgement that had served them before.
That is the part worth keeping. The pattern is the joke, not the men. Scott was not beaten by an unlucky season. He was beaten by five or six sensible-looking bets that happened to be wrong at the same time, in a place that does not grade on effort.
There is a version of this running right now with agents, and it does not look foolish from the inside either.