Victor Vescovo might actually be the world’s most interesting man. Photo: HBO Sports
Victor Vescovo is a very interesting man. He’s a person out of a novel; Clive Cussler would imagine a character like Vescovo. He’s an eccentric millionaire explorer from Texas, who, after retiring from the Navy, made a fortune in private equity investing. He spends his money, too, dropping vast sums of it on adventuring. He’s climbed the Seven Summits, the highest mountains of each of the seven continents, and he’s skied both the North and South poles. He is the first person to ever reach the deepest points in each of the Earth’s oceans, a feat that he accomplished in a submersible vessel called Limiting Factor that he not only operated but helped design. He holds degrees from Harvard, Stanford, and MIT, and he speaks six languages. “He’s an adventurer, without question,” says Patrick Lahey, the president of the company that built Limiting Factor. “He’s only happy when he’s going 100 miles an hour with his hair on fire.”
Vescovo is an exceptionally intelligent man. He’s capable of looking at himself critically. He makes decisions based purely on logic — a trait that’s seen him often compared to Mr. Spock. He doesn’t see that as a bad thing, however — it’s one of the reasons he’s so successful at nearly everything he does. But that determination often lands him in hot water with other determined people. His quest to dive deeper than anyone ever had meant, of course, diving deeper than the person who already held the record. And that person is a famous one: Hollywood director and Oscar winner James Cameron. He, as you likely remember, hit the 35,000-foot mark after developing a passion for deep-sea exploration. Vescovo set out to dive deeper, and when he announced that he had, in fact, gone 55-feet deeper, it sparked a very public spat between the two millionaire explorers.
All that — and quite a bit more — is the reason why Bryant Gumbel decided to profile the man for HBO’s Real Sports. The episode airs on November 24 at 10:00-11:00 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and HBO Max
