You’ve got to hand it to social media star Aurélien Fontenoy, he sure knows how to pick a relatively stupid and unimportant world record to break. And also the right building to do it in. Iconic Paris structure, the Eiffel Tower, has existed for 136 years, and for the majority of its time, very few people have attempted to climb it in any type of vehicle, instead, mostly pausing outside it to take selfies. Fontenoy, however, just broke the record for biking up its stairs.
He might as well have done it on a pogo stick. Wait that record might still be available! (Instagram/aurelien_fontenoy)
Does this mean that Fontenoy biked all the way up to the top of the Tower? Absolutely not! The highest that the stairs go up is to the second floor. Granted, that is about 337 feet and 686 steps, or about a third of the height of the structure. But does that even mean he actually pedaled his bike up the steps? Also no! He basically pumped on the brake and bunny hopped his way up the stairs. That’s a lot of effort, but it paid off, as he was able to do so in twelve minutes and thirty seconds, which shattered the old world record by almost seven minutes.
Not only did Fontenoy break the prior pointless record for biking up a third of a structure by a comfortable margin, he’d broken a record that existed for over 23 years. The primary reason is likely that for almost a quarter century, everyone was too embarrassed to go to the front desk of the Eiffel Tower and say, “Hello, I have my bike with me. Is it cool if I ride it up the stairs to the second floor?” Fontenoy had no shame and now he has a world record, and probably very tired legs.
“For this challenge, I brake my brake, and I just to have to compress my tire because I don’t have suspension or anything, it’s just a rigid bike,” Fontenoy told CNN Sports. “So we just have to pump with the brake and jump, jump, jump a lot!” The biker, who retired from competitive mountain bike racing five years ago, said he’d been planning the attempt for years, but COVID and the Olympic Games got in the way of things, which is also our excuse for not jumping up the Eiffel Tower on a bike, and a lot of other things we haven’t gotten around to yet.
Fontenoy says he’s not done now that he’s conquered (part of) the Eiffel Tower, and wants to continue to do this at other towers around the world. The good news is that if you can find a building with a 25 year-old world record for jumping up stairs on a bike before he does, you might be able to stake your claim and hold a world record until he beats it!
