Man denied World Record for Eiffel Tower made of 700k matchsticks due to wrong matches

Richard Plaud may not be able to set a world record after spending years building the Eiffel Tower with 700K matchsticks.

Richard Plaud's ambition to create the highest matchstick sculpture in history was dashed for using wrong matches.

Over the course of the previous eight years, Plaud assembled 706,900 matchsticks to create a 23.6-foot model of the Eiffel Tower, greatly surpassing the previous record by two feet.

He claims, that last week he received bad news from the Guinness Book of World Records, he had entered a record using the incorrect kind of matchsticks because they weren't available commercially.

"The Guinness Book judges have delivered their verdict, without actually seeing my tower in real life," he wrote on Facebook.

Plaud, a local government employee who works on councils, claimed that Guinness informed him that the matches have to be sold commercially and cannot be altered, broken apart, or twisted past recognition.

Guinness ruled that the attempt was invalidated because the matchsticks were not recognised as matchsticks and were not commercially available, according to Plaud.

“BIG DISILLUSION, DISAPPOINTMENT AND INCOMPREHENSION. They tell me that the 706,900 rods stuck one by one are not matches!!?? And they are too cut to the point of being unrecognizable!!??,” he wrote on Facebook.

Plaud made an agreement with a company to sell 33-pound boxes of headless matches after growing weary of purchasing matches from the grocery store and having to manually remove the sulfur heads from each one.

"It felt a little bit like Christmas when I opened them," he told Le Parisien. Though more practical, this match selection—which ordinary consumers cannot purchase in stores—seems to have put an end to his hopes of setting a world record. Despite Plaud's claims that his record attempt was legal, he maintains that the match invoices and the testimony of impartial witnesses will support his claims.

Though Guinness was said to have expressed that it might have been "heavy-handed" in judging Plaud's attempt to break the record, the record attempt is still on, and Plaud's desire of breaking the world record remains intact.

Toufic Daher of Lebanon now holds the record with his matchstick Eiffel Tower, which he built in 2009 using 6 million matches and reached a height of 21.4 feet.

(With inputs from agency)