Monday, February 20, 2012

Beat That!

While wandering around the internet, I came across these fun pictures of Guinness Book of World Record holders in the field of circus!

The longest duration to maintain a Marinelli bend is 50 seconds and
was achieved by Iona Oyungerel Luvsandorj (Mopngolia) on the set
of Lo Show de Record, in Milan, Italy, on 18 April 2009. 

Dr. David R. Admovich (The Great Throwdini, USA) threw 102
14" throwing knives around his partner Target Girl Tina Nagy (USA)
in 1 minute, in Freeport, New York, USA, on December 26 2007.

As you can no doubt imagine, this left me wondering what other circus feats classify as 'officially amazing' by holding a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. It didn't take long for me to regret ever having wondered such a thing...

My first search led to what seemed to be the official Guinness website and didn't have anything more exciting than the record for most hula-hoops spun simultaneously by an individual (107, almost 5 rotations by Aleysa Gulevich).

Then I ended up on Youtube, and that's when things got weird...


As someone who does German wheel, I feel the need to cry foul on a couple of things. Firstly, their feet are strapped in up to their calves. If you look at the clip of the former record holders, you can see that they used real German wheels and had the added difficulty of actually doing the work required to keep themselves strapped into the wheel. Also, I don't know what kind of wheels those blue wheels are supposed to be, but they look much wider than a German wheel. That would make the rotation in free hand much more stable. If you were to do those free hand rotations in a regular wheel and have such poor body position, the wheel may very well wobble, thus spilling the liquid, and even risk tipping over. As far as I'm concerned, those three cheated.

Also, rhythmic gymnastic wheel? What?

The more I looked, the more frustrated I became and the more doubtful I was of whatever results came. Fortunately, I remembered the following video, and it cheered me up in record time.

No comments:

Post a Comment