Calum Paton’s World Record

9 Dec, 2011 5:44 pm by in Comps and Events, Whitelines Magazine, z

 
 

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Ahhh, the Guinness World Records – conjures up fond memories of Roy Castle tap dancing & playing the trumpet, Norris Macwhirter (Matt’s grandad, FACT) casting his stern eye over proceedings, and …err… a pyramid of acrobats on a motorcycle.

Not things you’d regularly associate with snowboarding – agreed – but let’s not forget that Guinness make the finest alcoholic beverage known to man so there’s gotta be something in it, right?

Last Friday something quite incredible happened… Yes it is quite unbelievable, but despite having two DSLR’s and an old Sony Z1 (safety backup running constantly all night) we managed to completely fail to record Calum Paton bringing back the title of “World’s Longest Rail Slide” to Blighty from the Spanish. 65Gb plus five hours of cassette footage of people not making it to the end of a rail could strike fear into the average video editor, not to mention the shame of not actually recording the one crucial minute of the evening.

But sometimes you’ve got to suck it up, hold your hands up and say I’m sorry, I cocked up. So I’m sorry, I cocked up… I take responsibility, I am a lesser being today.

Luckily, Whitelines had somebody else in the building who was not changing his battery or neglecting to change a tape in time, and that man was esteemed snowboard photographer Dan Medhurst. Dan had spent five hours rooted to the same spot, shooting sequences of every single rider who rode that rail, and was still going at 11.30pm when everybody else had lost the will to live, as well as any hope that somebody would slide further than the 67 metre record.

When the moment came it was a true slow motion, life flashing before your eyes moment as my battery slipped into its housing, my fingers frantically fumbling the door shut as Calum slipped silently by, flying like a bullet train to victory.

But in the end we were so stoked that a) somebody actually broke the record and b) that it was Calum, as he’s been having a great start to the season and seems to be on a roll.

Hopefully the edit will make up for our complete lack of dignity on the filming side!