A Finnish chef shattered a Guinness World Record by draining nearly 17 ounces of orange soda in 3.16 seconds, and he still thinks he can go faster.
UPI reported that Tomi Kotilainen, a 26-year-old chef, finished 500 milliliters of Jaffa orange soda in 3.16 seconds on June 13 in Järvenpää, Finland.
That time beat the five-second target Guinness World Records had set for the category. Kotilainen became the first person listed as holding the mark for the fastest drink of that volume of soda.
The beverage was not a random pick. Jaffa is a Finnish orange soda, and Kotilainen called it “the best drink” in the world. The attempt was a straight chug, no fancy apparatus described beyond the stopwatch and the bottle.
The record fell in mid-June. Coverage landed months later, with an Oct. 14 dateline on the UPI piece that carried the numbers to a wider audience.
Five hundred milliliters equals 16.9 ounces, nearly a full pint of sweet carbonation forced down in the time most people need to find the bottle opener. Kotilainen cleared the official goal by almost two full seconds.
Guinness World Records frames the category as a pure speed trial: 500 milliliters of soda, clocked clean. He is the first name attached to the title as reported.
Kotilainen did not treat the mark as a finish line. He said he plans further speed-drinking records and believes more tries could push his own time lower still.
That is the working-cook version of continuous improvement: set a number, beat it, then hunt the next tenth of a second. No committee. No press conference about feelings. Just a chef, a favorite local soda, and a clock.
Järvenpää sits in southern Finland. The report gives the city and the date, not a stadium scene or a televised spectacle. The feat stands on the measured result, 3.16 seconds for 500 milliliters of Jaffa.
Odd records come and go. This one sticks because the gap is clean: a five-second bar, a 3.16-second run, and a 26-year-old who already wants another crack at it.
When a man picks a hard number, clears it, and starts planning the next attempt, that is personal standards at work, the kind of grit no slogan can replace.
