For eight years, Richard Plaud worked his butt off to build the world’s tallest Eiffel Tower in matches. Successfully. But the celebration was short-lived when it turned out that the Frenchman had overlooked a crucial detail.
Wednesday, February 7, 2024 at 2:57 PM
For the past eight years, Richard Plaud (47) from Saintes (Charente-Maritime) has been busy building the world’s largest Eiffel Tower with matches. After 4,200 hours of hard work, he unveiled the result at the beginning of this year: a 7.19 meter high Eiffel Tower – official measurement by a recognized surveyor – consisting of 706,900 matches. That deserves a mention in the Guinness Book of Records, he thought, and so the proud Frenchman completed the application form.
A piece of cake, he thought, because the current record (held by a Lebanese) is ‘only’ 6.53 meters. But what should have been a walk in the park turned out to be a disaster: a few days ago Richard Plaud received the message that the Guinness World Records jury did not validate the record. A cold shower.
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The 7.19 meter high Eiffel Tower was festively unveiled at the beginning of this year amid massive interest. — © Richard Plaud
One match is not the same
“Apparently I should have bought the matches for my Eiffel Tower at a regular store and manually scraped off the red phosphorus head. Unfortunately, I ordered my matches directly from the manufacturer, without the flammable part… “, said the very disappointed Frenchman.
Own fault? “It is true that the specifications explicitly mention that condition, but I only read that in October, when I was already very far advanced. Nevertheless, I was confident that the jury would condone this.” But the jury stands firm: “Regulations are regulations,” they said, strict but fair.
To the Frenchman’s annoyance: “A match remains a match, doesn’t it, especially if you buy it from a factory that puts it on the market? Well, well, the jury has decided nothing can be done about it. But what annoys me most is the lack of appreciation for my work, the time I put into it and the thinking that was involved, because this was anything but an easy job.”
That’s called a dream that goes up in smoke…
