When Rich Ellenson was growing up in New Jersey, he decided he wanted to organize a neighborhood basketball pickup game. So, he did what any 12-year-old kid would do and convinced his neighbors to let him borrow their portable basketball hoops so he could drag them down the street several times a week and play full court.

Years later, after attending the University of Maryland, Rich was looking for a friendly ultimate frisbee game and when he couldn’t find one, he took it upon himself to organize one.

Fast forward to present day, Rich, an information and communications manager with Sandia and self-proclaimed pineapple enthusiast, has set his sights on a new mission: breaking the Guinness World Record for peeling and slicing a pineapple.

Rich said that while he’s not outwardly competitive, when he gets into something, he really goes for it.

“When I decide I want to do or learn something, I drive it to success,” Rich said. “I’ve done this in my career and in my life. I’ll pick something up and learn it until I’m essentially a master at it, or master enough to do the job.”

Now, back to the pineapple.

Why pineapple?

In 2023, Rich was winding down a stressful and all-consuming home renovation project, adding a second story to his home where he lives with his wife and two children.

“The renovation was all I thought about for months,” Rich said. “It kept me up at night and was overall a pretty difficult time.”

But finally, it was wrapping up and Rich’s brain started to think about what was next.

“I’ve always loved pineapple,” Rich said. “I will eat an entire thing in one sitting, but I wondered if there was a better way to cut it.”

Rich said he started watching videos on YouTube to see how others peeled and cut the prickly fruit, then started looking up the fastest methods and from there he stumbled across the Guinness World Record. At that time it was held by Oscar Lynagh of Australia, who in 2022 won the record for cutting and peeling a pineapple in 27.02 seconds.

“I started cutting pineapple really fast and decided that I wanted to break that record,” Rich said.

Practice makes perfect

Rich explained that the process for entering the Guinness World Records is a lengthy one.

“First you email them to find out what it takes, then there’s 30 pages of rules and requirements to read through,” Rich said. “There are lots of rules about cutting pineapple: there’s a minimum pineapple weight, you have to cut it a certain way, the skin cut off can only be so thick, the pieces you cut can’t be bigger than an inch and a half on all sides, the knife you use must be commercially available. And then there’s the evidence portion. You need witnesses who they can contact, you need a food service professional in attendance, two timekeepers with stopwatches, photos, videos, and this all has to be done in a publicly accessible space.”

Once it was a go, Rich spent months cutting and eating pineapple in his garage, his kitchen, anywhere he could. In what he calls his clean practice runs, he was cutting the fruit in about 21-22 seconds, which he felt good about as it gave him some slippage time.

Next, Rich needed to organize a day and time to break some records. Finding a one-hour window of time that worked for the various witnesses, the food service professional and his timekeepers, was the biggest challenge, he said. Finally, he had a date — Saturday, April 13, 2024.

Leading up to the event, he scouted local supermarkets for the perfect pineapple that met the weight requirements and, as only a pineapple cutting expert would know, was the ideal firmness. He found the best ones at his local fruit markets and Whole Foods.

“A firmer pineapple gives your knife something to really push on and cut through. If it’s too squishy the knife won’t make a straight cut and if you don’t get a straight cut, you could accidentally cut too much of the pineapple meat with the skin, which could invalidate your results,” Rich said.

Rich’s big day

The days leading up to that Saturday were bright and sunny, Rich said, but April 13 was the first rainy day that northern California had seen in two weeks. But if rain means good luck on a wedding day, why not on a Guinness World Record making day?

“The day arrived, and it was almost like an out-of-body experience,” Rich said. “There were around 30 people gathered outside on my street. They all represented these different facets of my life. I had my family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, my kids’ teachers even. I had been practicing for so long by myself, and suddenly there are all these people there to watch me to do this thing.”

Rich had purchased 12 pineapples that morning, not thinking he’d need all 12, but turns out he did.

“My heart was beating so fast at first, I could have jumped over an 8-foot fence,” Rich said. “I made some awful cuts in those first two or three pineapples, I didn’t even have the food service professional look over them. I got to the fifth or sixth pineapple and, while I had calmed down, the pieces I cut were too large, so those got rejected. I start to get in a better rhythm and on my eighth pineapple, I make a clean cut, a perfect run, clocking in at 17.85, four seconds faster than my previous best time.”

By the end, Rich said his hands, protected by a metal cutting glove, were cold, wet and sticky. But just like he did with his childhood basketball game and his post-college-era ultimate frisbee team, he set his mind to something and made it happen.

Record breaking

Shortly after the event, Rich submitted all the necessary information to Guinness World Records: a cover letter, graphs, photos and videos.

“They said it takes a maximum of 16 weeks from when you submit the information to when you find out if you’re the record holder or not,” Rich said when he was interviewed for Lab News in early September.

It had been 18 weeks at that time, but Rich was optimistic, which, from his hour-plus interview, seems like a core part of his character — determined and optimistic.

When I first heard about Rich and his record-breaking attempts, I, like you perhaps, asked myself, “A record for what?” but now I kind of get it.

On Sept. 30, 24 weeks and two days after that 17.85 second perfect run and four days before this story was published, Rich got word that he was officially the new Guinness World Record holder with the fastest time for peeling and slicing a pineapple.

“It feels nice to be the best at something, even if it’s a strange something,” Rich said. “One of these days, my kids or someone’s kids can ask their Amazon Alexa who holds the record for peeling and cutting a pineapple the fastest, and the answer will be me.”