Attempt by Sri Lanka to set a world record for the largest gathering of twins might have failed on Monday (Jan 20, 2020) after an unexpectedly large turnout overwhelmed organisers who vowed to try it again.
Sri Lankan Twins group organizers had initiated to call upon the twins across the island to pack a sports stadium in its capital Colombo in order to break Taiwan’s Guinness World Record of 3,961 pairs of twins, 37 sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets, that was set in the year 1999.
An overwhelming crowd turned up more than the organizer’s expectation. The stadium was jam packed with a long registration queue snaking around the arena as birth certificates were checked and participants posed for photographs.
Organizers said the huge turnout meant they were unable to meet strict guidelines set by Guinness World Records.
“We had more twins participants than we expected. Getting them all to go through a single entry point was not easy,” Sri Lanka Twins spokeswoman Wasana Ranasinghe said. Not all, out of the crowd remained at the stadium to pose for a mandatory group photo or waited for at least five minutes, as required by the guidelines.
“We will know in two weeks if we actually qualified for the record or not, but even otherwise, we have managed to raise awareness,” said Ranasinghe. Some twins travelled for hours just to be part of the world record attempt.
Two army generals, Jayantha and Pooraka Seneviratne, led a contingent of twins in the Sri Lankan military. “Now that we know our strength, we can even make another attempt,” Jayantha said while posing for photos with other twins.
Software engineer S. Sathiyan and his village official twin Sayanthan travelled 400 km to Colombo from Jaffna the country’s northern part. “We travelled for 10 hours by train to get here on time,” Sathiyan said while talking to our reporters.
Everyone now is waiting for declaration of the results, to know whether their attempt has been successful or not.
