David Blaine Fails To Set Underwater Record

David Blaine emerged weak and wrinkly from a week spent submerged within an 8-foot snow globe-like tank — but without a world record for holding his breath.

Rescue divers jumped into the tank Monday and hauled up the stunt artist as he struggled to break the record of 8 minutes, 58 seconds. Blaine held his breath for 7:08, but after spending some 177 hours under water.

After being given oxygen, Blaine, 33, addressed the large crowd that had gathered around the tank on the plaza of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

“I am humbled so much by the support of everyone from New York City and from all over! the world,” Blaine said. “This was a very difficult week, but you all made it fly by with your strong support and your energy.”

The challenge had taken a toll on the magician’s body, including liver damage, pins and needles in his feet and hands, some loss of sensation and rashes all over his body, said Dr. Murat Gunel, who heads Blaine’s medical team and is associate professor of neurosurgery at Yale University School of Medicine.

Blaine started training in December, with some help from Navy SEALS. He lost 50 pounds so his body would require less oxygen. The water temperature was regulated to help keep his core temperature near 98.6 degrees, and he ate and relieved himself by tubes. He remained tethered to an oxygen tube.

As early as on the second day of his challenge, Gunel said, there was evidence that Blaine was suffering liver failure; the medical team consulted with medical experts at NASA before stabilizing his condition. Blaine’s underwater environment was similar to the weightlessness experienced by astronauts i n outer space, he said.

“I told him he needed to get out of the water, and he refused me,” said Gunel. “He said he did not want to let the people down.”

The doctor said Blaine had agreed to allow researchers at Yale to examine him after the stunt to see what they can learn about how the body responds to the environment underwater.

All day long, curious onlookers lined up to walk past the sphere.

Linda Brady brought along a boom box and loudly played Jennifer Lopez’s “My Love is All I Have.” Blaine appeared to respond by bopping to the beat.

“I just love him,” said Brady. “He has a creative mind just like me, and he’s crazy just like me.”

Another spectator, David Linker, said Blaine symbolized “man’s strength to go beyond what normal people can do.”

Blaine’s previous feats included balancing on a 22-inch circular platform atop a 100-foot pole for 35 hours, being buried alive in a see-through coffin for a week and surviving insi! de a massive block of ice for 61 hours, all of which were performed in New York. In 2003, he fasted for 44 days in a suspended acrylic box over the Thames River in London.