HOSSA, March 21 — Johanna Nordblad swam horizontally 103 metres under ice Thursday to claim a new world record wearing only a short swimsuit, spending two minutes and 42 seconds in water temperatures of two degrees Celsius.
Nordblad, 45, achieved the record by swimming from one hole in the 60-centimetre-thick ice to another in the snowy wilderness around Hossa in northern Finland.
Her swimsuit covered just her torso and thighs.
“Because we have this corona thing, all the swimming pools are closed, I can’t really train regularly, so I was much more nervous before diving (this time),” Nordblad told AFP in a phone call afterwards.
Governing body for underwater sports CMAS recently took over the measuring of under-ice records, which had up to then been run by Guinness World Records.
In the Guinness era, the longest distance covered under the ice, in a swimsuit and without fins, was established at 102.7m by the Russian Ekaterina Nekrasova, on March 6 this year. — AFP
