What is a World Record?

[Bigthumb]

Just what is a World Record?

 

Recently 16 year old Jessica Watson sailed arount the globe single handed, but was deemed too young to enter the record books as the youngest person to complete the feat.

 

So an older person still hold the record for being the youngest person to sail solo around the world. :loopy:

 

Can a person be too fast to break the land speed record, or too tall to be the world's tallest man?

 

Should the actual youngest person to sail around the globe hold that particular record, or will the record for ever stop with a 17 year old?

[cgksheff]

Whilst being too young to qualify for the record, under the rules of the International Sailing Federation World Sailing Speed Record Council she failed to sail a route that was long enough to comply.

 

Had she sailed far enough, she would have been recognised as an unofficial holder by all that matter.

 

I can run round the world in a matter of seconds if I do it at one of the poles.

[Bigthumb]

Whilst being too young to qualify for the record, under the rules of the International Sailing Federation World Sailing Speed Record Council she failed to sail a route that was long enough to comply.

 

Had she sailed far enough, she would have been recognised as an unofficial holder by all that matter.

 

I can run round the world in a matter of seconds if I do it at one of the poles.

 

Well apart from the fact that you have just posted a load of total and absolute fiction you are quite correct.

 

She actually sailed the required 23,000 miles and crossed the equator twice as required.

[HeadingNorth]

For records of this nature, the authorities usually do impose an age limit on any attempt - after all, would we be happy if a ten year old was sent off around the world on his own in a boat?

 

Anyone deemed too young to safely make the attempt in the first place, is not allowed to qualify for holding any records related to it - including the record for youngest to complete.

[Anna Glypta]

For records of this nature, the authorities usually do impose an age limit on any attempt - after all, would we be happy if a ten year old was sent off around the world on his own in a boat?

 

Anyone deemed too young to safely make the attempt in the first place, is not allowed to qualify for holding any records related to it - including the record for youngest to complete.

 

Which rather makes such records pointless.

[hitch_1980]

The other part to this is.....did anyone see the reception she got....WOW.....where as Elen McArthur got more of a reception from france than she did from here.

[HeadingNorth]

I don't know if "youngest person ever to complete a solo transatlantic crossing" is an officially recognised record in the first place. Given that the bodies who recognise such events have imposed an age limit, they probably don't.

[Anna Glypta]

I don't know if "youngest person ever to complete a solo transatlantic crossing" is an officially recognised record in the first place. Given that the bodies who recognise such events have imposed an age limit, they probably don't.

 

I am not sure that some self appointed body has the right to be arbiter over any records anyway. If someone has clearly done something faster, slower, younger, taller, older than everyone else it doesn't need someone who brews beer in Ireland to decide whether it is a record or not.

[HeadingNorth]

I am not sure that some self appointed body has the right to be arbiter over any records anyway.

 

 

I'm pretty sure that the international body in charge of sailing - whatever it's name is - is not merely "self-appointed."

[HeadingNorth]

I don't know if "youngest person ever to complete a solo transatlantic crossing" is an officially recognised record in the first place.

 

 

 

I know that it isn't:

The teenager's feat will not be considered an official world record because the World Speed Sailing Record Council discontinued its "youngest" category, which was held by another Australian, Jesse Martin, after he completed the journey in 1999 at the age of 18.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/15/jessica-watson-sailed-world-home

 

It appears that they withdrew the category for exactly this reason; it had reached - and arguably, passed - the point where it's dangerous for children to be attempting the record on their own. (I recall a big argument in Holland over a 14-year-old who wanted to attempt some solo sailing effort, and the Dutch courts had to intervene to prevent her on child safety grounds.)

 

 

It also, of course, means that the OP is not entirely accurate; the record for youngest solo completion is not still held by an older person than Watson; it simply doesn't exist. It's not a record that is kept.