Man who spent eight years building 23ft Eiffel Tower finally receives Guinness World Record after initially being disqualified

Could you imagine spending eight years on a project in the hopes of it breaking a Guinness World Record for it to be disqualified?

Well, this happened to frenchman Richard Plaud, who spent nearly a decade of his life creating a ginormous matchstick version of the Eiffel Tower.

Richard's tower was a staggering 23ft tall using 706,900 matchsticks and over 50 pounds of glue.

Guinness World Records

While he had hopes of breaking the world record for the tallest matchstick figure, when it came to be assessed by Guinness World Records in December 2023, they disqualified his tower for a devastating reason.

The reason they gave was down to the fact that only 'commercially available' matches would qualify for creating a record-breaker.

Richard, from Montpellier-de-Médillan, was undeniably devastated by the result, sparking a GWR investigation into the matter.

"It’s the job of our records management team to be thorough and fastidious in reviewing evidence to make sure the playing field is level for everyone attempting a Guinness World Records title," Mark McKinley, Director of Guinness' Central Records Services, said at the time of the investigation's conclusion in February.

"However, it does appear we might have been a little heavy-handed with this application."

Mark added: "We will make contact with the record holder again as well as review rules for similar records as a priority, to see what can be done.

"We are therefore very happy to award Richard with the Guinness World Records title and we have corrected some inconsistencies within our rules which now allow the matchsticks to be snipped and shaped as the modeller sees fit."

He concluded that the organization 'regret the distress' they'd caused Richard following their initial ruling and hailed his Eiffel Tower as a 'truly impressive structure'.

Facebook/Richard Plaud

Richard has since received his official certificate and seems to bare on ill will towards GWR.

Sharing photos of it on Facebook, Richard described the feeling as 'amazing' as he smiled from ear-to-ear.

The frechman completed the work of art on the 100th anniversary of the death of the actual tower's engineer, and believes he spent a whopping 4,200 hours of his time into the project since December 2015.

The record for the world's tallest matchstick strucutre was previously held by Toufic Daher from Lebanon, who built a 6.53m (21ft) Eiffel Tower in 2009.