Largest Santa Run: Surf-n-Santa 5 Miler breaks Guinness world record (VIDEO)
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va, USA -- A total of 5,025 race participants dressed in Santa suits crossed the finish line at the Surf-N-Santa 5 Miler in Virginia Beach, breaking the Guinness World Record for the Largest Santa Claus Run, according to the World Record Academy. Photo: A total of 5,025 race participants dressed in Santa suits crossed the finish line at the Surf-N-Santa 5 Miler in Virginia Beach, breaking the Guinness World Record for the Largest Santa Claus Run. Photo: Chelsea Nuzum (enlarge photo)
The Guinness World Records world record for the fastest marathon dressed as Santa Claus is 2 hr 54 min 2 sec and was achieved by Brian Lang (USA) at the Philadelphia Marathon, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, on 22 November 2015.
Guinness World Records also recognized the world record for the largest gathering of Santa Claus; it was achieved by 18,112 people during an event organised by Thrissur Citizenry & Thrissur Archdiocese (India) for Buon Natale Programme 2014 at Nagar Saktan Thampuran Ground, Thrissur, Kerala, India, on 27 December 2014.
Participants needed to be wearing all five pieces of the Santa suit provided to them for the duration of the race, including red pants, a red jacket, hat, black belt, and a white beard in order to count toward breaking the Guinness world record, The Runner's Worlds reports.
The event team was also required to take video of the start and the end of the race, and have counters at the finish line to see how many racers did not have their full five-piece suit on.
The four official counters tallied 191 Santas who did not have their full suit on, which left them with 5,025 official Santa finishers—still well above the previous Guinness world record of 4,961 Santas set at the 2013 Dundalk Charity Santa Fun Run in Ireland.
