A French man has reached the sky in his attempt to build the tallest matchstick sculpture, but world record officials may have smashed his dream to pieces.
Richard Blood said he spent eight years making a 23.6-foot model of the Eiffel Tower using 706,900 matchsticks and more than 50 pounds of glue. However, Guinness World Records said he used the wrong type of match, disqualifying Blood from breaking the standing record.
Blood, a local authority council employee, said Guinness told him that because the matches were not commercially available and were not recognized as matches, his attempt would be disqualified. He added that the organization said that matches cannot be cut, dismantled, or distorted beyond recognition.
“The Guinness World Records judges issued their ruling without actually seeing my role,” Blood wrote in French on his website. Facebook page. “A huge disappointment, disappointment and lack of understanding😟🥺. Tell me that the 706,900 rods stuck one after the other are not identical!!?? And that they are so cut that they are unrecognizable!!??”
The current record holder is Tawfiq Daher, from LebanonWho made the Eiffel Tower matchstick reaching a height of 21.4 feet in 2009 with 6 million matchsticks. The Plaud version is about two feet higher.
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Guinness will review Blood Tower after all
However, Blood's frame still stands tall and so does his attempt to break the record.
Mark McKinlay, director of central records services at Guinness, said the judges may have been too hasty in rejecting Blood's structure, according to the Independent. NBC News.
“It is the job of our records management team to be thorough and thorough in reviewing evidence to ensure that the playing field is level for everyone trying to obtain a Guinness World Record title, but it appears that we may have been a little too stringent with this request,” McKinley told the outlet. “We will be contacting the number holder.” Standard again as well as reviewing the rules for similar records as a priority, to see what can be done.”
USA TODAY has reached out to Guinness World Records and Plaud for comment on the latest review case.
“Getting a world record was a childhood dream.”
Since December 2015, Blood has been working for a long time to make the tower match the match, according to the French newspaper Le Parisien. With every piece he placed and attached, he stuck to his goal of surpassing the 2009 record.
“Achieving a world record was a childhood dream. It was always on my mind,” Blood told Le Parisien.
Blood initially bought matches from the supermarket and cut off the match heads for each one, a process that became frustrating. He eventually reached an agreement with a manufacturer and obtained 33-pound boxes of headless matches, Le Parisien reported. However, this convenience came at a cost as regular customers could not purchase matches, which eventually led to a Guinness dispute.
He finally completed the project on December 27, 2023, the centenary of the death of French civil engineer Gustave Eiffel. Eiffel developed the famous Paris Tower named after him.
