Czech freediver David Vencl has announced plans to attempt to break Stig Severinsen’s eight-year-old Guinness record for swimming under the ice.
In 2013, Severinsen set the record of 250 feet (76.2 meters) underwater — without fins or even a wetsuit — below one-meter-thick ice on a single breath of air.
If COVID-19 restrictions allow, Vencl will attempt to swim 80 meters (262 feet) at the end of this month under the ice of Lake Weissensee in Carinthia, Austria.
In non-cold-water conditions, Vencl has swum 141 meters (462.6 feet), and has been training for the below-ice swim by working out with friends in Lake Barbora, Teplice in the Czech Republic.