By Sofia Ferreira SantosBBC News1 hour agoImage source, Richard Plaud/REUTERSImage caption, It took Richard Plaud 4,200 hours to construct his Eiffel Tower modelA model of the Eiffel Tower has been declared the tallest matchstick building in the world, just a day after it was initially disqualified by Guinness World Records (GWR). The 7.19m (23ft) tower was disqualified on Wednesday for being constructed with the wrong type of matches, but GWR later reconsidered its decision and acknowledged model-enthusiast Richard Plaud for his achievement.Mr Plaud, 47, expressed his emotional journey during this week, stating that it had been an “emotional rollercoaster”. It took eight years for Mr Plaud to build the model, utilizing 706,900 matches and 23kg of glue. Initially, he began constructing the tower by removing the red, sulfur tops off commercial matches, but soon realized that this would be a lengthy and tedious process. After reaching out to the manufacturer, he received plain wooden matches and continued with his construction. Mr Plaud, from Montpellier-de-Médillan in western France, finished the tower on 27 December and sought authentication from GWR. Initially, it was rejected as only “commercially available” matches were considered for a record-breaker, however, GWR revised its decision on Thursday.Mark Mckinley from Guinness World Records expressed the organization’s excitement in approving the record. “We’re happy to be able to admit that we were a little bit too harsh on the type of matches needed in this attempt, and Richard’s attempt truly is officially amazing,” he added.Mr Plaud aims to showcase his tower in Paris for the Olympics in July. The previous world record was held by Toufic Daher from Lebanon, who built a 6.53m (21ft) Eiffel Tower in 2009.
