Ploughing world record breaker: ‘There’s no point in being nervous’
A Dunmore contractor has broken a Guinness World Record for ploughing by cultivating an acre faster than anyone has before.
Pa McHugh, based in Dunmore, Co. Galway, ploughed an acre in nine minutes, 19.96 seconds in front of 4,000 people at the Glenamaddy and District Ploughing and Agricultural Show on Sunday, October 4.
The event took place in the Equestrian Centre in Glenamaddy, Co. Galway.
Up until this month, the record for ploughing an acre, according to the Guinness Book of Records, stood at nine minutes, 49.88 seconds, set by Joe Langcake at Hornby Hall in Cumbria, England, using a Case IH 7140 Magnum tractor and a Kverneland four-furrow plough.
McHugh told Agriland that on his previous attempt last year, also at Glenamaddy, he missed the record by “44 seconds”.
He said: “We gained 70 seconds this year.
“Look, we did it anyway, that’s the main thing.”
This time around, McHugh and his team altered their approach.
“We measured out the plots differently,” he said.
“More into the mathematics, the measurements.”
He also said that the team set the same plough up the same way as “the man doing it in England in 1989”.
Equipment
For the big day, McHugh used a Massey Ferguson 8735 S and an Amazon plough (“a new one”).
Because this was an official Guinness World Record attempt, there were third-party adjudicators present, with independent judges (including a garda) measuring, photographing, and recording the event.
On the Guinness World Record organisers, McHugh said “the adjudicator had all the details through the web pages”.
He added: “The measurements had to be taken down, and done so by independent men to make sure it was okay.”
McHugh could not confirm if he’ll be in this year’s Guinness World Records book, but was confident his achievement will appear in the famous record book at some stage.
He said: “We’ve all the boxes ticked on our end, everything done that we were supposed to do.
“Everything was done 100%. We’ll be in it.”
When asked if he was nervous on his second attempt to take a world title, McHugh said: “No - not a bit - there's no point in being nervous.
“You won’t win it then, would you?”
