37-hour marathon tennis match to help Haiti victims set Guinness record
By ANIMonday, January 25, 2010
SYDNEY - Two Australians, Indian-origin Jeganathan “Jega” Ramasamy and Gavin White, have completed their endeavour to play the world’s longest continuous singles tennis match in efforts to help victims in Haiti.
Jega and Gavin met two weeks ago, after the latter placed an ad in the local newspaper, to find a partner to break the previous record of 36 hours and 36 minutes and raise money for the Haitian earthquake victims.
The two had set out on a marathon 37-hour match on Friday and battled shocking heat, followed by rain, fatigue, sleep depravation and even delirium, to smash the Guinness World Record by almost an hour.
They achieved the feat on Sunday, when Gavin played a forehand winner down the line and the scorer called “game”.
It was then the pair agreed to call it quits, having unofficially set a record of 37 hours and 32 minutes, made up of 35 consecutive matches and 102 sets.
Neither had trained for the attempt and Jega said he responded to Gavin’s ad, as he always liked a challenge.
“I thought this crazy man; I should join this crazy man,” The Daily Telegraph quoted Jega, as saying.
It could be up to six weeks until the record is made official. (ANI)
