THERE is a moment during Stacy Allison's account of her climb up Mount Everest when she thinks another woman in her expedition is going to beat her to the title of first American woman to the summit.
''She'd gotten the jump on me and I couldn't help feeling as though she had sneaked past me in order to get to the summit first. Dammit, I didn't want to get into this kind of competition. But I couldn't help it, I needed it more.'' It might sound rather unsporting, but Allison had a point. She could not afford to be number two - what she describes as ''a has-been'' - because in this media-motivated world, being the first in any chosen category of gender, race or nationality to achieve a glamorous goal, can set you up for life: TV appearances, commercials, and, of course, books.
All these books are about women who have scored such ''firsts''. Allison went up Everest, Helen Sharman was the first British woman in space and Helen Thayer the first woman to make a solo journey to the magnetic North Pole. But that perhaps is the only link between them.
For Allison, her moment of anger at base camp passed, bad weather intervened and neither woman made it to the summit in 1987. Allison returned the next year to claim the glory of the national title.
She also won the virtually automatic advertising revenues from companies like Nike and the chance to travel around the United States giving motivational speeches to large companies.
Forty-five minutes spent on an ice-covered mound at the top of the world taking photos of banners from the expedition's corporate sponsors somehow justified days of pain and years of hard training as well as wiping away the sense of uselessness after an unhappy marriage in which her husband beat her.
