Dave Wilson - world record consecutive bowling

Submitted by Patrick Grote on Sat, 06/03/2006 - 2:40pm.

People who set world records are sort of the odd bunch of the world. If you go over to the Guinness Book of World Records you can see that most of the newer records are set by companies. Dave Wilson of Cincinnati, Ohio is attempting to set another world record.

See, last year he set a record for continuous bowling, but five days later a Suresh Joachim beat his mark. Not only did the Canadian beat his mark, but crushed it by 40 or so hours. Suresh Joachim is what you'd call a professional record breaker. He holds over 20 current world records ranging from crawling a mile to balancing on one foot. To say that Dave Wilson was Suresh-whacked would be an understatement.

What sets Dave apart is that he's just a normal guy. He's 40 and is doing this to raise money for the Building Blocks Foundation, which provides assistance for kids with medical problems.

Dave is within an hour of breaking the world record. How do I know this? The organizers have set up a bowling web cam and also have a blog about the bowling event. The web cam only updates every 15 seconds, but you can really see that Dave is starting to have problems. At one point they had to sit him in a chair to bowl.

The rules are very strict when it comes to setting a consecutive bowling record. You only get a 15 minute break every 8 hours and you have to bowl straight through, only pausing for pin placement and lane recycling. Watching Dave throughout the day you can tell he cherishes each one of those seconds.

Hopefully Dave will make it and Suresh will have to move on to another world record.