Largest human wheelbarrow race
In Melbourne, Australia, a flood of human wheelbarrows surged across a school sports field to smash a hotly-contested record, then a speedy pair surprised onlookers by breaking another!
On 9 September 2008, the entire population of Carey Baptist Grammar School happily gathered in pairs in the name of Guinness World Records. The record they were aiming to smash – the largest human wheelbarrow race – was held by a high school in Singapore and stood at 700 participants.
At 1pm on the bitter and blustery day of their school athletics carnival over 1,000 students and teachers lined up along a wide stretch of the oval. For those who would be the wheelbarrows, the finish line 50 metres away seemed an impossible distance. But when the start signal sounded a mass of bodies surged forward, and when the final human wheelbarrow crossed the line the new record stood at 1,044 participants, or 522 pairs.
Amongst the first to cross the line were Josh McCormack (16) and Arjuna Benson (15), who then decided to have a go at the Fastest 50-metre Human Wheelbarrow Race. The current record, held by a father and son team from Barbados, stood at 15.56 seconds. Josh and Arjuna’s first run on the pre-measured athletics track came in 0.5 seconds too slow, but after a few minutes of rest the pair crossed the line in an amazing 14.87 seconds, another new record!
07 October 2008