SOME spend their whole lives trying to break that elusive world record, and a tiny minority achieve it, giving them bragging rights for all eternity.
But then there's Christian, who clocks up a handful every few weeks – in fact, by the time we finish telling you about his latest milestone, he's likely to have surpassed it.
Dr Christian López at Torrijos sports centre, where he is a trainer (photo: Encastillalamancha.es)
So forgive us if Spain's record recordman's most recent round number is already old news before you get past the first paragraph of this article.
After all, the sports instructor and motivational speaker from Cabañas de Sagra (Toledo province) normally only needs a few seconds to break a world record, which means it's tough keeping up.
When we introduced Dr Christian López to our readers in November 2020, the sporting ace was 32 years old and we boasted on his behalf about how he had one-and-a-quarter world records to his name for every year of his life.
That seemed like small fry when, in May this year, we told you about how he had upped his total by almost 75%, to 67.
Back then, he ran up Spain's fourth-tallest building – the Torre Emperador tower block in Madrid, with its 56 storeys and 230-metre (754-foot) structure – in under eight minutes, but not to set a record. It was merely practice for breaking his 68th which, by now, would have meant two for every year of his life.
And barely three months on, the 'Toledo Turbo' has left his own achievements standing: Christian has just smashed his 90th.
While we were lazing on the beach, moaning about the heat and feeling so lethargic we could barely be bothered to move to turn the fan up a notch, the man who already held more world records than anyone else in Spain was adding another 23 of them to his list.
In the past year and nine months, New Yorker Ashrita Furman – who holds the most Guinness World Records on earth – has upped his own total from 200 to 600, but at Christian's current pace, we wouldn't rule out his overtaking the present global leader one day.
Christian has spent eight months training for this specific record, number 90, and one which is fairly typical of the other 89 feats he has accomplished: The fastest 200-metre run backwards, whilst juggling with three items.
He had to complete it in under 48.59 seconds to earn his place in what will be his eighth consecutive Guinness Book of Records, and comfortably undercut the previous fastest time by six seconds, finishing in 42.59.
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