Sports Day for All : Record

I was overwhelmed with excitement by the announcement from Ms Lisa HOFFMAN, Guinness World Records Adjudicator that a new Guinness World Record (GWR) of “The Longest Handshake Chain” was created by 3,434 participants in the afternoon of 2^nd November, 2013 at Tseung Kwan O Sports Ground, Hong Kong. 

I take this opportunity to thank all of those who offered their care for visually impaired people, efforts to help, patience to follow and tolerance to adopt sudden changes due to unforeseen difficult situations.

“Sports Day for All” received over 4,700 registrations from very enthusiastic schools, NGOs and Rotary family members of our district in advance. Originally, we must thank to our over 1,200 volunteer helpers who agreed to surrender their registration for GWR to others since the highest allowance of participants for Tseung Kwan O Sport Ground is only 3,510 people. 

Unfortunately, we were informed at around 12:40pm that Hong Kong Observatory would consider hoisting Typhoon Signal #3 at about 2:00pm. Since Education Bureau is one of our event hosts, advised us that according to the rules, we must need to prepare for discharging our students once Typhoon Signal #3 was hoisted and the GWR should not be recognized if it was operated under illegal situation.  We estimated that we were still waiting for over 1,000 participants to arrive then.  After discussion with Lisa, the GWR Adjudicator, she agreed to accept the attempt to be done by all who were there by a simple signing of names registration. 

The decision was made with immediate announcement at 1:30pm to request all on site volunteers and helpers to register and proceed to rehearsal within an hour, and final official attempt was made at 3:23pm.  We were lucky that the Typhoon Signal had not raised higher, and officially registered participants were over 3,000. 

Under such difficult circumstances, confusion could be imagined.  I must thank all of you who were unbelievably cooperative, disciplined, and truly helpful to make our dream a real one!  Please accept my heartiest thankfulness, the laurels are all yours!

[slickr-flickr tag=”Sport_for_All”  type =”slideshow”]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rotary3450/sets/72157637257918693/

With warmest regards,
Past District Governor Tony Wong
Sports Day for All Co-chair