David Blaine

[Freedive WI]

He was trying to beat Tome Seitas's "offical" record of 8:58- although Tom has done 10:03 in practice, it doesn't count unless a bunch of different conditions are met. One of these conditions, no breathing anything other than plain old air- not out of a tank- for two hours prior, would have negated the record even if he had done it. He also had a pretty big "samba" at the end of his 7 minute breath hold so that would have disqualified him in any recognized competition.

There was some wild speculation on the freediving lists that he might breath pure 02 leading up to the final breath hold which would have screwed everything up. Tom has done over 13 minutes after a pure 02 breath up and Umberto has been reported to have done a 19 minute + breath hold after a pure 02 breath up.

If you look in the Guiness book you'll see a long breath hold that no one in freediving counts. That's because the guy did it by first breathing pure 02, for over 30 minutes, at the bottom of a pool and then started his breath hold down there- which means he started with a greater volume of gas, pure 02 no less, than he could have ever gotten on the surface. As his dive went on he kept moving up the side of the pool into shallower water.

The safety diver, Martin, was the former static world record holder at 8:03. He also holds MANY other records in all kinds of different areas. His latest record was a 350' freedive using nothing but a monofin- no ropes, lift bags or sleds!

Jon