Man sets Guinness record in event involving tiger

BANGKOK, Feb 6 (Reuters Life!) – An American man wowed a crowd of Thais by setting a new record as the world’s fastest skipper yet still failed to impress a tiger loping alongside.

New Yorker Ashrita Furman, 53, officially won a place in the Guinness Book of World Records on Sunday by skipping 5 km (3.1 miles) in 35 minutes and 19 seconds at Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi province, some 150 km west of Bangkok.

A 6-year-old male tiger named Hurn Fha accompanied him for most of the journey but balked at the last 100 metres.

“I saw he didn’t want to go any further and I don’t want to force him, because skipping’s supposed to be fun and so the tiger didn’t want to be fun so it’s okay we skipped enough,” he said.

Furnam, who currently holds 56 records listed in the Guinness database, has attempted or set other records involving animals. In 2005 he held a small dog in his arms while setting a record in Edinburgh for the most jumps on a pogo stick in a minute.

Last year he attempted to break the underwater juggling record in an aquarium in Kuala Lumpur, but failed when a shark bumped into him and knocked the balls out of his hands.

Furman says on his Web site that he has broken records on all 7 continents and in more than 30 countries.

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