A man wanting to break the Guinness World Record for the tallest Eiffel Tower sculpture made of matchsticks suddenly saw his dream go up in flames after he was told that the material he used disqualified him for the record.
Richard Plaud’s impressive creation amounted to 706,900 matchsticks, 4,200 hours of his life, and a goal to celebrate the most emblematic structure of his country’s capital.
A resident of Charente-Maritime, a French department located in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, the talented artist believed he had easily beaten the existing record held by Lebanese model maker Toufic Daher, who used six million matches to create an Eiffel Tower replica measuring at 6.53m (21.4ft).
Richard Plaud had his dream of breaking a Guinness World Record shattered after learning that the Eiffel Tower replica he had built contained the wrong kind of matches
Image credits: TF1 Info
In contrast, Richard’s version of the symbolic structure stands at 7.19m (23.6ft).
Unfortunately, the Frenchman received bad news from the English judges: he had used the wrong type of matchsticks to qualify for a record because they weren’t commercially available.
“The Guinness Book judges have delivered their verdict without actually seeing my tower in real life,” the man, a council worker for a local authority, denounced on Facebook.
In addition to being available for public purchase, he was told that the matchsticks must “not be cut, disassembled, or deformed to the point where they are no longer recognized” as such.
After 8 years of work, Richard completed his structure, hoping to earn recognition for building the tallest Eiffel Tower replica made of matches
Richard told French media outlet TFI he started off the tower with matches bought at the supermarket but, over time, grew tired of manually cutting the red tips one by one. To save time and effort, he contacted the main French manufacturer to have the wooden rods delivered in 15kg boxes without the sulfur heads.
“When I opened them, it was a bit like Christmas,” he told Le Parisien. “Having a world record was a childhood dream.”
Little did he know that the Guinness World Records adjudicators would later appear as The Grinch, stealing away that dream.
His impressive tower contains a total of 706,900 matchsticks and is over 7 meters (23 ft) tall
Richard said he was unaware that the cut matches would disqualify him from the Guinness World Record, and he expressed his outrage at the announcement that the material he used couldn’t be “recognized.”
“BIG DISILLUSION, DISAPPOINTMENT, AND INCOMPREHENSION. Tell me that the 706,900 sticks glued together one by one are not matches!!?? And they are too cut to be unrecognizable!!??” he wrote on Facebook.
“Clearly, the English are really different……,” he said of the London-based Guinness, before adding: “No offense to the English.”
Sadly, the matches that Richard used weren’t commercially available, a requirement to receive the World Record title
But Richard shouldn’t give up on his dream of breaking the world record just yet.
Mark McKinley, director of Guinness’ central records services, told NBC News: “It’s the job of our records management team to be thorough and fastidious in reviewing evidence to make sure the playing field is level for everyone attempting a Guinness World Records title. However, it does appear we might have been a little heavy-handed with this application.
“We will make contact with the record holder again, as well as review rules for similar records as a priority, to see what can be done.”
Richard built his tower without the red tips of the matches and contacted a manufacturer to have the wooden rods delivered in 15kg boxes
“BIG DISILLUSION, DISAPPOINTMENT AND INCOMPREHENSION. Tell me that the 706,900 sticks glued together one by one are not matches!!??” he wrote online
The French model maker started working on the tower in his living room back in December 2015 and finished on Dec. 27 last year, the 100th anniversary of the death of Gustave Eiffel, the French civil engineer who designed the Parisian tower that bears his name.
Now, Richard told TF1 that he’s not sure where he will exhibit the 7-meter-tall tower.
After presenting it to a crowd of 4,000 people in a hall in Saujon in January, his next goal is to display his creation at the Olympics in Paris this summer. However, organizers have reportedly told him “there was no room high enough to accommodate it.”
“I would have been raging,” someone wrote online
