I retook the record for the fastest time to bounce 5 ping pong balls into 5 pint glasses. I first broke this record on December 31, 2018, while at dinner at the famous El Avion restaurant in Manual Antonio, Costa Rica with a time of 3.51 seconds. It was my final (and 51st) record of the year in 2018 (with a goal of 52, but I had 9 disqualified). It was since broken with a time of 2.81 seconds. I decided if I was going to take it back, I’d better do it in style.
There are several Guinness guidelines that call out the surface type, the restrictions on the cups, the spacing of the cups, the type of ITTF approved table tennis balls that can be approved, etcetera, that can quickly disqualify what would otherwise appear to be a valid attempt. Those were all taken care of ahead of time.
The most important rules are that the hand must be flat on the surface before go and you have to call out stop and lift your hand once the 5th ball bounces into the 5th cup. Frame by frame analysis shows that go is said and the stopwatch is running before my hand left the surface of the counter. I then call out stop and the 5th ball is in the cup when the stopwatch still reads 1 second 90-something. Leaving early gives the biggest advantage evidenced by the fact that well over half a second elapses between go and the first ball getting into the cup.
