Wim Hof

Wim Hof, born on 20 April 1959 in Sittard in the Netherlands, is a Dutch motivational speaker and extreme athlete nicknamed the Iceman for his tolerance of cold. He has held Guinness records for the farthest swim under ice, 57.5 metres in March 2000, for the longest full-body contact with ice, and for a barefoot half marathon on ice and snow in Finland in 2007, though several of these have since been broken. In 2007 he climbed Mount Everest to about 7,400 metres in shorts before turning back with a foot injury. He promotes the Wim Hof Method of cold exposure, breathing and meditation, whose studies show mixed results and whose safety has drawn criticism and reports of deaths among practitioners.