Weissensee (Austria) (AFP)

This is not the way the Austrian Christian Redl imagined ending his adventure: unconscious on the frozen surface of Lake Weissensee after having failed to conquer a record for snorkeling under the ice.

Assembled by a member of his team, immediately taken care of by the doctors on site, the sportsman is shaken but philosopher: "for me, it's not dangerous. It's just something that can happen", explains- he, after recovering his spirits, to AFP journalists who witnessed his attempt.

This 43 year old brown is part of the small community of freedivers to hunt the exploit in icy waters.

Located at 930 meters above sea level, in a setting of fir trees and high peaks in the south of the country, Lake Weissensee had to offer it the ideal conditions to descend to 71 meters deep, in two-degree water, and thus beat the discipline record held by a New Zealander.

The attempt took place in mid-February, when 30 centimeters of ice covered the water.

The descent by means of the pig attached to a cable went as planned but the diver was struck down during his ascent with the fins: "I burned too much oxygen to propel myself with my arms and legs and that, combined with the water temperature, ended in blackout. "

Vocations sometimes take strange detours: it is because his professional activities did not allow him to carry out his record attempts during the summer that the sportsman, grown up near Vienna, specialized in freediving under the ice cream, earning the nickname "Iceman".

At 30, he was able to give up his job as an investment banker to devote himself to his passion, supplementing his income by teaching diving and playing in films.

His ability to remain freediving for up to six minutes made him a sought-after extra for the drowned roles, he recalls laughing.

- In "absolute darkness" -

But it was in his character of extreme diver that he flourished, with a pronounced taste for spectacular adventures: last year, he immersed himself in the dark waters of the caves of the glacier of Hintertux, in the Tyrolean Alps, at 3,200 meters above sea level; in 2012, he left for Nepal to explore the depths of a lake at 5,160 meters above sea level.

This Nepalese experience remains the most demanding he has ever had.

"The first ten doctors I saw said to me: + it's impossible, you're going to die +". The eleventh said + you're going to die but the project is interesting + and I focused on the second part of the sentence ".

Ant Williams, his New Zealand rival who holds the record for snorkeling under ice, credits him with "talent" for a sport he describes as "far more intimidating and uncomfortable than normal diving".

"The water is not only frozen but it is absolute and threatening dark below," he told AFP.

Unlike freediving under ice, confined to specialists, diving in frozen lakes is attracting more and more followers, observes Ernest Turnschek, director of a diving school at Weissensee and friend of Redl for over twenty years.

"Practitioners are fascinated by the hues visible underwater," he explains.

Christian Redl mainly trains in the swimming pool. "I do everything thanks to the mind and I don't care about the cold," he says.

The quest for records in the abyss costs him more and more, he admits: "I feel that I am aging and that I need more training than nine years ago, at the time of my first record in diving under ice ", 61 meters deep.

But like many freedivers, he tells of the "addiction" of the depths, the desire to go always further and the "incredible feeling" of the ascent to the surface.

"When you breathe the outside air again, it's like a rebirth."

© 2020 AFP