WORLD> Photo
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WORLD> Photo
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'Ice Man' aims to break record in freezing bath
(CFP/Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-10 10:58
Wim Hof, known as "The Ice Man", has spent the last 20 years testing his talent in the most extreme conditions from scaling mountain tops wearing nothing but a pair of shorts to swimming under sheets of ice in the north pole. Now he is set to break his own world record by submerging himself in a plexiglass container filled with ice at temperatures as low as -20 degrees for more than 1 hour 45 minutes. Mr Hof discovered his unusual talent over 20 years ago during a stroll in the park in his native Holland. "I had a stroll like this in the park with somebody and I saw the ice and I thought, what would happen if I go in there," reveals the 48-year-old Dutchman. "I was really attracted to it. I went in, got rid of my clothes. Thirty seconds I was in and a tremendous good feeling when I came out and since then, I repeated it every day." It was the moment that Mr Hof knew that his body was different somehow: he was able to withstand fatally freezing temperatures. Mr Hof began a lifelong quest to see just how far his abilities would take him. In 2000, dressed only in a swimsuit, he dove under the ice at the North Pole and earned a Guinness World Record for the longest amount of time swimming under the ice. Braving temperatures of minus three degrees in the water the temperature dropped to as low as minus 30 degrees when he exited the water. "The first big challenge was to swim a distance of 60 metres under an ice-deck of a metre thick beyond the Polar Circle," he recalls. "My goggles froze and I lost the track and so I went off course a little. I probably did the best record ever - around 80 m. |
