Getting into Guinness: One man’s longest, fastest, highest journey inside the world’s most famous record book
him to reconcile with his father. “The Guinness thing actually helped because it was something he could relate to. He couldn’t relate to my joining this group, and he thought I was giving up my religion, even though I had already become totally disillusioned. When I started getting media attention, it was something he could understand and it really helped a lot. He came when I set a jumping-jack record, but then he said it was too painful to watch and that was the only one he came to.”
Over the years, Furman has amassed an impressive list of record-breaking locales, but like the ski bum, he has worked out a lifestyle to do it on the cheap. “The travel sounds better than it is. My teacher holds these free concerts and I organize the trips and get a tour conductor’s ticket, and I also get air miles. There are times when I specifically go to a place, like Egypt, because I wanted to set a record at the Pyramids and I use air miles, but most of the time, it’s wherever I am travelling with the band. Last year we went to Turkey, Bulgaria and Thailand and I didn’t have to pay. Also you always need witnesses and that can be hard in other countries but on our concert trips we have all these people who are credible witnesses for Guinness, like professors and doctors, so I’ll use them.”
The last few years have been especially intense, because his record-breaking velocity has picked up. In 2006 he set 39 different records, and then added 36 more in 2007, a pace that shows no sign of slowing down. In historical perspective, it took him 18 years to notch his first 50 records; just eight years for the next 50; and in the two years since he has added 77 more. Part of this has been the self-fulfilling prophecy of his success: the more he does, the better he gets at logistics and fitness, and the more he can do. But structural changes at the book have also made it easier. Whereas early on he scoured the pages for existing records he could break, in recent years Guinness World Records management has grown much more permissive about new, invented records. In all likelihood, 20 years ago, the existence of pool-cue balancing would have precluded the acceptance of his baseball-bat balancing, and Hula Hoop Racing While Balancing Milk Bottle on Head, Fastest Mile, would never have been accepted, full stop.
Ashrita recalled how the many changes in the book over the past three decades have affected him and his spiritual quest.
The Guinness book was a reference book, an encyclopedia, a place where you could ask “what’s the most push-ups anybody has ever done?” and then open it up and it would be there. It was like that for years and years and years, until maybe 1996. Around then it changes. It stopped becoming a reference book and it became just a list of fascinating facts. That affected me in a number of ways. It is more difficult to find records. They cut out a huge chunk of records and everything is in a database that the public does not have access to and that’s a problem because you really are in the dark, you don’t know if there is a record. There is a tiny percentage of all the records, something like 2 per cent [actually, about 8 per cent of all official Guinness World Records are published in the book each year]. That allowed them to expand the categories and changed the philosophy from having to do something that was already in the book to get in, and I think that was a good thing, because now they are much more open minded about new categories. It’s a tremendous opportunity for me and I am having a great adventure, but there is some feeling of loss, because it’s no longer a book where you can go through it and say “wow, let me try that, or that would be great to break.” That’s the major change. But I still go through the new book as soon as it comes out. I devour every new edition and I think I’ve already broken eight or nine records from the 2007 book.
He told me this in March 2007, just six months after the book had hit the shelves.
The other change for me personally is that because all the records aren’t published in the book anymore, each record is not as competitive. Someone could do a record, like one I just saw for throwing the Guinness book the farthest distance. I would never have known about that if I hadn’t read an article about it. That guy threw the book, and it was accepted. Okay, so you are supposed to have media coverage, but let’s say his local paper covers it and it never shows up on the Internet. He’s got the record, he gets the certificate, it’s not in the book, I have no idea, and no one is going to try to break it so he could have that record for ten years and no one knows. I don’t know what the solution is, and I’m not complaining, but it changes things. That definitely diminished the level of competitiveness and maybe the standards somewhat.
Competitiveness is a huge factor in the book’s appeal and history, but most would-be record breakers are simply competing against essentially faceless opponents. They are, in fact, named, but for all purposes are anonymous to readers who do not actually know them. Not Ashrita. He is a prized target, and by virtue of his all-time Guinness champion status, his records carry more cachet, both for the one-off record breaker and for a handful of challengers who have emerged over the years to make a run at the King of World Records. “I love some of the rivalries,” says Ben Sherwood, former executive producer of CBS’s Good Morning America. Sherwood is also a longtime Guinness World Records fan, and author of the Guinness-inspired novel The Man Who Ate the 747. “Ashrita has some great rivals. There’s some dude in Morocco who walks farther with a brick than he does, so one year it’s him, and the next year Ashrita has to walk five miles farther with the brick without putting it down, and then the next year the guy in Morocco walks five more miles than that. There are those kinds of funny rivalries over who can walk the longest distance with a certain kind of brick without putting it down. But in Ashrita’s case it has a lot to do with his faith, and that’s an unusual thing and he is not typical.”
Ashrita admits that records can become somewhat personal possessions, and losing them hurts, but at the same time he makes himself an easy target. Knowing that records actually published in the book are much more likely to be broken, as public knowledge makes them easy targets, Furman could keep the bulk of his 170-plus records, nearly half of which are current, out of the public eye simply by not mentioning them. Perhaps five to ten of his records are printed in the book itself each year. But his regularly updated website offers a detailed chronological list of his feats - along with advice on how to go about being a record breaker. This supports what he claims is the real purpose of his mission, to inspire others, and he cannot do that by hiding his records.
When my records are broken there is a part of me that says “oh no,” especially if it is one of the longer ones that takes weeks or months of training, but it doesn’t really bother me, I’ve really come to a good place about it. Now I really see it as an opportunity. Because for some reason I don’t have the same motivation to break a record if I still have it. I think there is an innate push inside of everyone to make progress and I think this is progress. Why do people climb mountains or race cars? I think there is an urge to transcend. That is a lot of the motivation, to be the best and push past the limits. I’m not going against any person, but against the ideal. When someone breaks one of my records, I’m happy because he’s just raised the bar and, in some way, increased the level of progress of humanity.
He insists it never gets personal - at least for him. “It’s not about competing with someone else, it is about finding the talent within yourself, the inner strength, doing the best you can and making spiritual progress. But over the years there have been a few people who wanted a rivalry.”
Like Steve the Grape Guy, whose record for catching thrown grapes in his mouth Furman recently broke. Ashrita says the Grape Guy’s agent called, trying to set up a high-profile grape record showdown in New York. Ashrita passed. “I wished him the best of luck, but I’m not breaking his record. I’m not going against the person but against the record.” He says Suresh Joachim has also challenged him. Joachim is the closest thing in the world of Guinness to Ashrita, both in terms of numbers of records, types of records and stunning physical endurance feats. Despite still being far behind Ashrita in total records, Joachim is another leading example of the extreme of serial Guinness record setting. His website refers to him as ‘Suresh Joachim, The Multiple Guinness World Record Holder’, and he claims to have broken more than 30 different records, some of them mundane (riding escalators), some romantic (most bridesmaids and ushers at a wedding, his own), some mind-numbingly difficult (standing on one leg for over 76 hours). Ashrita recalled looking at Joachim’s website and reading about his intention to become the man with