A Hong Kong team have set a new world record with lightning-fast Double Dutch (another name for rope skipping). This feat was achieved at the 2016 World Rope Skipping Championships in Sweden.
The coordinated jumpers won the top prize, as well as establishing a new record, in the double-dutch four by forty-five seconds. Here they achieved an astonishing 671.5 jumps within three minutes at the championships in Malmo. This impressive feat smashed the previous record of 603 jumps in three minutes. With the new record the Chinese team were jumping at a rate of 3.7 jumps per second.
The jumpers behind the feat come from the Hong Kong Jump Rope Skipping Academy. The record has been captured in a video. The footage shows the athletes jumping through the ropes at a high rate of speed, expertly trading places without missing a rotation of the rope.
The team move so quick that it is almost impossible to see their feet touching the ground. The discipline not yet included in the Olympic Games. Perhaps its time to extend the range of included sports to include rope jumping?
Records are set via review of continuous video, with each jumper’s right foot in shot. The video mist have good quality audio to enable the entire number of jumps to be clearly counted. Decisions are made by the sport’s federation, the FISAC-IRSF.
As well as speed, the annual championship rates competitors on skill and acrobatics as well, as shown with the female Swedish entry:
