A few weeks ago there was a funny story from the world of athletics. An American sprinter competed in a 200 metre race. He finished the race in the astonishing time of 18.90 seconds. This was a new world record, much faster than Usain Bolt’s record of 19.19 seconds.
The sprinter, Noah Lyles, looked a little confused. Had he found new levels of power and speed that he hadn’t known he possessed? Unfortunately, five minutes later it was revealed that there had been a mistake. Lyles had started from the wrong lane, and had run just 185 metres, not the full 200.
He was understandably disappointed. He later tweeted, “You can’t be playing with my emotions like this…”
I wondered if there were any other phantom record breakers. I found a strange story about a massive sandwich. You may have heard of the Guinness Book of Records. They keep a record of lots of strange and unusual events – such as the longest official football match ever played (3 hours and 23 minutes), or the greatest amount of chilli peppers eaten by a single person in sixty seconds (97 grams). Some people are excited by the idea of appearing in the book, and try to beat a previous record. Sometimes charities or other groups try to get publicity by attempting to beat a record.
An Iranian organisation tried to gain publicity for its activities by beating the record for the longest sandwich ever made. They gathered over 1,000 people in a line to try to make a single sandwich 1,500 metres long. They succeeded in generating publicity, as many ordinary Iranians gathered to watch the attempt. They finished making their huge sandwich, and then officials from the Guinness Book of Records started to measure it to see if it was longer than the previous record of 1,378 metres. The Iranian team smiled, and started to dream of seeing their name in the book.
But the measuring was taking a long time, and some people in the watching crowd were starting to get impatient, and hungry…
Yes, you guessed it. People in the watching crowd pushed forwards and started to eat the sandwich before it could be measured. And the record was lost forever.
So Noah Lyles shouldn’t feel too bad. He is not the only phantom record breaker. I wonder if the sandwich tasted nice?
Vocabulary:
a phantom–a ghost; something which seems to be there but is not real
to possess something – to own something; to have something as your belonging
publicity–widespread attention from the media
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