Florian “Venom” Kohler
Florian ‘Venom’ Kohler, who already owns 11 Guinness World Records, just came back from a very successful week-end at the League Room in West Virginia where he was able to set 4 new World Records.
While the main focus was ‘Most Trick Shots Completed in 48 hours’, he was also able to grab ‘Most Trick Shots in 1 hour’, ‘Most Trick Shots in 24 hours’ and ‘Longest Pool Trick Shots Marathon’ in the process.
“After a very successful 24 hour World Record during COVID, I always entertained the idea of pushing the limits even further so the idea of the Most Pool Trick Shots completed in 48 hours came naturally. Little did I realize how difficult it would be to actually complete this challenge.’’
Difficult it was indeed, since Guinness World Record only allowed 5 minutes of break per hour of shooting completed. That equaled less than 3 hours 30 minutes of break taken by Kohler in the course of the full 48 hours.
He had three attempts to perform each trick shot with every one of those being part of the approved WPA Artistic Pool program. Once the 120 shots of that program had been attempted, he simply had to start over and repeat the process until 48 hours had passed.
According to ‘Venom’ the biggest issue was a persistent back ache due to retrieving the balls.
‘The ball return was really the biggest oversight. The 9ft Diamond coupled with the new Dynaspheres Paladium we used really played fantastic but after 8 hours or so I started to feel some pain in my lower back. I did not think much of it at first but the more I continued the worst it got to the point of being almost unbearable. About 18 hours in we had to pick up a back brace for me to keep going.’
While the ball return was clearly an unforeseen difficulty, Kohler also mentioned it most likely allowed him to beat the previous records easier. Indeed, he went on to beat the 1 hour record by a margin of 11 shots, pushing it to 69 shots completed (previously 58) and smashing the 24 hour one by a margin of over 430 shots as he completed 1,185 trick shots versus 753 in 2020.
With those records under his belt, he was able to considerably slow down the pace but the hardest part was yet to come. While he kept a solid rhythm all the way through the next evening, exhaustion really started to set at the 32 hour mark.
‘From there it really was a mental and physical fight. My stroke as well as my legs were getting slower and on top of the lower back pain, I also started to get shoulder, neck pain, blisters and even burns on my fingertips.
Nevertheless, I kept pushing until 4am the next day, where I started to have mild hallucinations and disorientation. At that moment I really had to take a break and I opted for a 1 hour nap. While it certainly helped, after I came back the clock still showed 9 hours left and I cannot begin to explain how long that felt. Every movement was painful and every shot got slower.’
After another 6 hour session he opted to take the remainder of the breaks which equaled to approximately 30 minutes and finished the last couple of hours strong.
During the event, he clocked 5 miles around the pool table, made over 5,000 balls and attempted 2445 shots for 1816 completed which made for an outstanding success rate of over 74%.
The event was recorded in Full HD, with commentary by none other than Hall of Famer Mike Massey and Artistic Pool Pros Jason Lynch & Brian Pauley while the official referee was Vincent Enderlin from France.
Viewers can watch Kohler’s newest world record attempts in its entirety on his YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ5CbZcEPyD2qA6PNFkRZWg.
This event was proudly sponsored by PoolDawg, The League Room, APA, Cuetec, Kamui, Diamond, Integrity Cues & AN9HIL8ION.
For more information on Kohler’s World Record Attempts, please contact venom@venomtrickshots.com
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