Tomi Kotilainen, a 26-year-old chef, has set a new Guinness World Record for the fastest time to drink 500 milliliters of soda — downing a bottle of Jaffa, a popular Finnish orange soft drink, in just 3.16 seconds in his hometown of Järvenpää. The attempt was filmed in June and formally certified by Guinness this month.
The category was newly created for the attempt, according to Guinness World Records, which set a qualifying time of under five seconds for the roughly 16.9-ounce serving. Kotilainen beat that threshold with more than a second and a half to spare, becoming the first person to hold the title.
Kotilainen, who told UPI he considers Jaffa "the best drink" in the world, said he decided to go after the record simply because "I have always wanted to be good at something." Asked how he trained for a speed-drinking title, he offered a one-word answer: "By drinking."
He let out a loud burp immediately after the attempt was confirmed and said afterward that he thinks he could shave off even more time if he tried again — treating the record less as a finish line than an opening bid. He's reportedly already eyeing other drink-related Guinness categories to attempt next.
Jaffa has been a fixture of Finnish soft-drink shelves for decades, giving Kotilainen's record a flavor of local pride beyond the stopwatch: a hometown chef, in his hometown, setting a world record with a hometown soda, verified not by taste but by a timer that stopped just past the three-second mark.