An Austrian sportsman kept his cool on Saturday (September 5) and set a new world record for standing in a box full of ice cubes, lasting a teeth-chattering two hours, 30 minutes and 57 seconds.

Wearing only a pair of swimming trunks, 42-year-old Josef Koeberl was covered in ice up to his shoulders in a transparent box, his arms crossed against his chest. He beat the previous record for full-body contact with ice of two hours, eight minutes and 47 seconds, which he set himself last year.

"I didn't think I would make it. It was actually long, but the time went fast. Unbelievable," Koeberl told reporters after emerging from his frozen confinement into a balmy afternoon in the town of Melk on the Danube, where a small crowd watched him on the main square.

"At the end I had to concentrate. After two hours thirty the pressure went down a bit but it was really, really cold," he added.