TALIN, Armenia -- If there were a Guinness record for most world records per capita in one town, it would doubtless be held by Talin, Armenia.
The nondescript farming community about an hour west of the capital, Yerevan, is home to around 7,000 people. But Talin's small size belies the large number of feats of strength performed by its residents.
On a side street in a repurposed kindergarten stands a small gym whose name could be translated roughly as "Home of the Titans," a reference to ancient Armenian warriors of legend. On the walls of the gym, set up in 2021, hang 25 certificates from the Guinness World Records organization marking the records that have been set by the athletes -- many of them just teenagers -- who train here.
The longest duration rope hang with one finger: 47 seconds, held by Artak Saroian.
The most Hula-Hoop rotations around the neck in 30 seconds: 104, held by Haik Ghazarian.
The most pull-ups from a helicopter in one minute: 32, held by Hamazasp Hloian.
"There are whole countries that don't have as many records as Talin," said Vardan Tovmasian, the head of the Dyuntaznagirk Association of Titans, an NGO dedicated to documenting Armenians' record-breaking endeavors.
(A spokesperson for Guinness told RFE/RL that they do not keep records for the number of record-holders by place.)
The top record-holder at Home of the Titans is also its proprietor and head trainer, Roman Sahradian. The compact 35-year-old has broken eight records in his career, including most toe touches in one minute while holding on to a bar with four fingers (36) and most "horizontal bar back hip rotations" in one minute (41).
Sahradian opened the gym in 2021. His young charges pay 6,000 drams (about $15) a month for a membership, with group trainings twice a week after school. Although Talin does boast one female record-breaker -- Rita Khachatrian, who set the mark for most extended Russian twist sit-ups in one minute -- on the day RFE/RL visited, the entire squad was made up of boys and young men, and the gym was deeply suffused with teenaged-boy camaraderie.
After some warm-up stretches, the crew held a friendly deadlift competition. The youngest of the group, 11-year-old Misak Galchian, went first. He strapped on a weight belt around his waist and chalked up his hands as other boys vigorously massaged his legs and rubbed his shoulders like a prizefighter before a match. One gave him a bottle of smelling salts, and he took a whiff. He lifted 50 kilograms.
After all the boys took their turn, it was off to the gymnastics room for a quick demonstration of high-bar giants -- an exercise in which the athlete holds on to a bar and spins around in 360-degree loops while his body is fully extended. One boy gets strapped in and his comrades count along in encouragement. He makes it to 27 before his arms give out. Sahradian helps the child down and steadies him as he woozily tries to regain his sense of balance.
The high-bar giant is the exercise that got Sahradian into the Guinness World Records. In 2010, he saw a television report about another Armenian, David Fahradian, who had broken the world record with 350 without stopping.
Sahradian had been doing high-bar giants in his backyard in Talin, maxing out at about 60. But the news about the record inspired him to train more seriously and soon enough he and Fahradian were regularly breaking one another's records every couple of months -- 450, then 560, then 670. In 2011, Sahradian managed 1,001; it took him a full 28 minutes.
That record stood for more than a decade, until 2022, when Battsengel Soyol Erdene of Mongolia did 1,111. But Sahradian still believes his achievement is unique. He found out how tall Erdene was and crunched the numbers: Because he is taller than the Mongolian, his feet traveled a bit farther over the course of the 1,001 spins, he says.
At age 35, though, Sahradian thinks he is too old for endurance records like that one, so he is concentrating on performances that don't take as much time. This year he is shooting for two new records: high-bar giants performed on a bar carried by two moving trucks and high-bar giants done with a reverse grip.
And he also is seeking out records for his young charges to break. This year, athletes from the gym will attempt to break records including those for planche push-ups in one minute and Hula-Hoop rotations around the elbow in one minute.
One 9-year-old "Titan," Arshak Sahakian, showed off his form to visitors as he prepared to break the world record for most one-handed cartwheels in 30 seconds. (The holder of the current record of 26, Salaar Mehsood of Pakistan, set it when he was 6 years old.)
Once the gold standard for measuring what extreme accomplishments the world was capable of, Guinness's reputation has declined in recent years. It now makes much of its money by sending official adjudicators -- at a cost that can reach tens of thousands of dollars -- to oversee record attempts, which are increasingly being undertaken by PR-seeking brands or reputation-whitewashing dictatorships.
But Talin and the Titans represent a more homespun side of the enterprise.
They don't have the money to bring in adjudicators; Guinness accepts their video recordings as sufficient documentation. And Sahradian maintains an idealistic view of the Guinness world, complaining that in Armenia it is undervalued compared to other parts of the world.
"In the West, if an athlete breaks a Guinness record, it's a big deal," he said.
But in Armenia, he says, the government has not been interested in funding or supporting Guinness record-breaking attempts, spurning his outreach to the Education, Science, Culture, and Sports Ministry.
"They say, 'Guinness is not a sport,'" he complained.
Instead he gets funding from local donors, including the Ijevan brandy company (whose owner is from a village near Talin) and a charity foundation run by an émigré businessman in the United States.
Sahradian has become adept at working the system and finding records for him or his trainees to break. He scours the Guinness website either for records he thinks are beatable or to come up with new variations on existing achievements, which he proposes -- via Google Translate -- to Guinness.
The high-bar giants on a moving truck record, for example, is one he proposed himself. Guinness approved it, after he signed a standard waiver, on the condition he could do at least 20 rotations. He proposed another new record of doing toe touches while hanging from a helicopter; Guinness also said they would accept that if he could do 20.
He thinks he can do at least 40. The problem, though, is the helicopter. After athletes at the gym set a number of aerial pull-up records, the company that had been providing the helicopters said they now needed new licenses from government aviation authorities and that, for now, the Titans can't use their aircraft.
To Sahradian, it is yet another obstacle the Armenian state has put up to hamper its citizens' world-beating ambitions. And he's ready to give another country credit if they support him.
"We would do it under the American flag, under the Czech flag," he said. "If it's not possible to do it here, we’re ready to do it in any other country."
The most recent record set by an athlete from the gym was for pull-ups performed on a bar held by two moving trucks: 18-year-old Grigor Manukian did 44 of them in June 2023. He said he could have done 50 but wanted to dedicate his record to the soldiers who died in Armenia's 44-day war with Azerbaijan in 2020.
Manukian also has the record for chin-ups from a flying helicopter in one minute (36) and is training to break the record for the same feat from an airplane -- bureaucracy permitting. In the meantime, he keeps training along with the rest of the Titans.
"Everyone here inspires everyone else" to break more records, he said.
