We won’t let Guinness officials kill our buzz after 100-year-old marathoner is denied a world record
We won’t let Guinness officials kill our buzz after 100-year-old marathoner is denied a world record
Apparently, a British passport and a letter from the Queen aren’t enough to prove one’s date of birth, even if you’re a 100-year-old man who just ran a marathon. The BBC reports that Fauja Singh, who completed the Toronto Waterfront Marathon earlier this month, won’t be recognized by Guinness World Records without a birth certificate. We think this is a lame move on the part of the Guinness people, particularly because Singh’s trainer says India wasn’t even issuing birth certificates in 1911, the year the runner was born. But we won’t let the stubborn folk at Guinness diminish the fact that Singh’s is a remarkable story. Read the entire story [BBC] »
If late-life passports, issued when someone was a self-reported “92”, are “proof” of birth, then please explain why “130” year-olds with passports only exist in nations where birth registration is absent (for when these persons are born) but are never observed in nations which require birth registration. It therefore logically follows, and has been statistically proven, that late-life documentation of age, based on self-report, is unreliable.
If someone wants to claim to be the “world” “age” recordholder, then they should have proof of age. Anyone can run a marathon in 8 hours.