When I first broke this Guinness World Record back in 2018, I it was simply to break an easy one while in vacation in Costa Rica. My challenge? The fastest time to bounce five ping-pong balls into five glasses. At the time, beating the sub five second mark felt like a checkbox to try to get to 51.
It was a memorable New Year’s Eve in Costa Rica, at the El Avian restaurant, inside of an airplane. Amidst the festive ambiance, I was on a mission: to break 52 Guinness World Records in 52 weeks. It was here I successfully bounced five ping-pong balls into five glasses in a staggering 3.51 seconds. But in the world record did not stand.
No sooner had I claimed the record, it was snatched away. I doubled down on my training, refining my technique with a singular focus during COVID and got 2.03 seconds. That was broken with a 2.00 second run (well within the margin of error timing).
It was a multi-year wait before I was able to get in another application for the record. This time I practiced even more (and I got to use shorter cups because of a rule change). The result: blink-and-you-miss-it time of 1.64 seconds.
It’s been viewed millions of of times on Guinness’s channels. Stayed tuned for the next one: I’m shooting to break a record every week.