The highs (and lows) of record breaking

Last month, as the sun blazed across the Swiss Alps, I travelled to the Bernina glaciers in the Engadin for some off-piste skiing. I expected to find a wilderness: in this corner of east Switzerland, the resorts are sparse and the mountains rarely busy. But, to my surprise, the top of my beloved Diavolezza mountain was seething with people. Unbeknown to me, Freddy Nock, a 50-year-old Swiss acrobat, and father of five, had chosen that sunny day to try to win a place in the Guinness World Records for tightrope walking at high altitude and for tightrope walking at high altitude blindfolded. His crew had suspended a 347m rope, with a diameter of just 18mm, between two remote peaks. The altitude was more than 3,500m and Nock planned to walk without a safety harness.

If he succeeded, he would break a 30-year record previously set by Philippe Petit, who famously walked between New York's World Trade Center towers at an altitude of 411m. If he fell, Nock faced certain death. So crowds had gathered on Diavolezza, close to the action, to watch the outcome.

As I observed Nock through borrowed binoculars - he looked like a tiny dot suspended in the cerulean sky - I was torn by conflicting emotions. Part of me was awestruck by his courage: in some senses, Nock was displaying the crazy determination to push boundaries that has driven all manner of explorers, adventurers and inventors for centuries. Another part of me was horrified; if you are going to defy death in such a dramatic way, why not pursue a more noble cause than balancing on a rope? Why not discover a new planet, fight a just war, combat Ebola - or do something that clearly makes the world a better place?

There was another question that bothered me: what is it about the Guinness World Records that generates such awe? Byany standards, the phenomenon is extraordinary. The brand is so deeply woven into western cultural fabric that people often think it is centuries old.

Not so. Its origins "only" go back to 1951, when Sir Hugh Beaver, then the managing director of the Guinness Brewery, went on a shooting trip with friends in Ireland. There he argued with them about whether the golden plover was Europe's fastest bird.

The row made him realise that the world lacked any single authoritative record-keeping book. So, in 1954, he launched The Guinness Book of Records as a piece of free marketing literature. To his profound surprise, it was a spectacular global hit. It captured the mood of a postwar age when people were hungry to celebrate progress. Indeed, the book was so wildly popular that it broke records itself (it is now on its 61st edition and is the world's highest-ever-selling copyright book).

Fifty years ago, the records that captured the public's imagination were generally about endurance, speed, skill or other extremes of the human and animal condition. Recently, the focus has shifted. The challenges seem less obviously noble. In addition to daredevil feats of the sort that men such as Nock specialise in, "records" have been set for having the longest fingernails, the most tattoos, the longest session playing Grand Theft Auto IV or consuming the most hot dogs in 10 minutes.

The organisers have toned down some of the excess. They have recently halted competitions to break records for food and alcohol consumption or where the events encourage people to do excessively harmful things. But the problem is that in a world of reality television and social media, consumers expect to see increasingly extreme thrills - close up - and the media industry pays people who can fulfil that demand.

If a man such as Nock wanted to break records 50 years ago, few spectators could have watched. But today you can stand anywhere - even on a remote Swiss mountain - and use a mobile phone to watch videos of people breaking records around the world. You can even see images of people plunging to their deaths when they have slipped off trying to break tightrope records.

Thankfully, Nock averted tragedy: after 39 minutes, he broke the high-altitude record - although he did not set the record for blindfold balancing. At the very last minute, he decided it was too windy.

The crowds cheered and duly disappeared. But as blessed peace descended on the Bernina glaciers, I wondered what future historians would make of this. Will they hail Nock as an adventurer like Neil Armstrong or Edmund Hillary? Or as a symbol of a world where affluent humans are running out of sensible challenges to pursue? Who knows. Either way, Nock is unrepentant. "I just want to show what is possible. There are no limits," he declared, after his walk. "When I am 80, I still want to be dancing on the rope."

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Illustration by Shonagh Rae

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