Richard Plaud, a Frenchman who built a model of the Eiffel Tower using 706,900 matchsticks poses next to the structure measures at 7.19m in this undated photograph taken in Saujon, France, January 7, 2024. Richard Plaud/Handout via REUTERS
PARIS 鈥� Guinness World Records on Thursday told Frenchman Richard Plaud that his 7.2-metre (23.6 ft) matchstick Eiffel Tower was a record height, a day after initially rejecting it for using the wrong matches to Plaud鈥檚 dismay.
Plaud said he had been on an 鈥渆motional rollercoaster鈥� this week, after spending 4,200 hours over eight years on building his model from more than 706,000 matches and 23 kilos of glue.
鈥淔or eight years, I鈥檝e always thought that I was building the tallest matchstick structure,鈥� he told Reuters.
However Guinness World Records initially told him he didn鈥檛 make the cut as he hadn鈥檛 used matches that were 鈥渃ommercially available鈥�.
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Plaud started off by using commercial matches, cutting the head off each. Tired of this tedious process, he asked the manufacturer if he could buy just the wooden sticks without the head, prompting Guinness to refuse his record.
鈥淲e鈥檙e really excited to be able to approve it (鈥�) we鈥檙e happy to be able to admit that we were a little bit too harsh on the type of matches needed in this attempt, and Richard鈥檚 attempt truly is officially amazing,鈥� said Mark Mckinley, director of central records services at Guinness World Records.