Helping to set a new Guinness World Record.

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of helping out as my friend attempted to set a new world record for the longest squash match. The current record stood at just over 35 hours and Jamie Barnett and Len  Granger were going for 36 or 37 hours.

Now going for a World Record is hard enough by itself as playing continuous and competitive squash takes a lot of training and dedication, however it is complicated by the amount of evidence that Guinness require in order to award the record. For every hour of the game the lads needed 2 witness who must be of a professional status, 1 referee to score the match and 2 stewards to make sure that everyone was where they should be and that breaks were scheduled and food / drink etc in place. For 36 plus hours this is a lot of people.

I took my turn by being a referee which was quite stressful in itself. I am not a squash player and it was only when I got there that I found out I had to ‘umpire’ the match fully, saying the score out loud for the camera and filling in a score sheet. ( You can just see one in the photo.) I refereed hours 3 and 4 when they were still playing a fast game too.

After this I spent several hours across the period cheering the lads on. They started at 7 am on a Friday and when I arrived at 8 am the following morning they were struggling. (I meanwhile was full of beans after a curry night out and good nights sleep.)

As part of the match they were allowed a 5 minute break/hour which they accrued and took as 10 minutes every other hour. During this period copious amounts of sugary sweets and sports gels were consumed and massages administered. However at around 3pm on Saturday the team was advised that these breaks could not be included for the continuous play count and they had already taken  2 hours 40 minutes in breaks which then had to be added to the time. It was quite sole destroying at this point

Jamie and Len carried on though on and despite blisters and bad backs competitive play continued and at just gone 9pm on Saturday they achieved 38 hours on the clock and swapped their rackets for glasses of bubbly. Exhausted but happy.

As far as we are all concerned the World Record was broken, and a call to Guinness on the Monday established that the breaks can be counted after all, so the smiles are even bigger now.  All we are waiting on is the official confirmation, a lot of paperwork and video footage has been submitted to Guinness who can take a few months to confirm but I am sure that everything was done by the book and hopefully by the time they receive official notification Jamie and Len’s bodies will have recovered too and they can celebrate in style.