A man who spent years building the Eiffel Tower with 700,000 matchsticks could be stripped of his world record for using the wrong matches.

LONDON — Richard Proud’s dream of creating the world’s tallest matchstick sculpture may be gone.

The Frenchman has spent the past eight years painstakingly stringing together 706,900 matchsticks to create a 23.6-foot-tall model of the Eiffel Tower, easily beating the existing record by two feet.

But last week, he says, Guinness World Records delivered bad news for him. He used the wrong type of matchstick to get the record – because they were not commercially available.

“The Guinness Book of Records judges rendered their verdict without actually seeing my tower in person,” he wrote on Facebook.

Mr Proud, a local council officer, said he had been told by Guinness that the matches must be commercially available and could not be cut, disassembled or altered beyond recognition. Ta.

Mr Proud ruled for Guinness: “As the matchsticks were not commercially available and did not qualify as matchsticks, this attempt was disqualified.”

“Big disillusionment, disappointment and lack of understanding😟🥺. [They] Please tell me that the 706,900 sticks inserted one by one don’t fit!!?? And they’re cut so far that I can’t tell them apart! ! ? ? ” he wrote.

“Obviously the British are really different…😤,” he said of London-based Guinness. He ended his message by saying, “I don’t mean to insult the British people.”

Tired of buying matches at the supermarket and manually removing the sulfur heads from them, Proud struck a deal with a manufacturer to sell matches without heads in 33-pound boxes.

“When I opened it, it felt a little like Christmas,” he told Le Parisien. Although more convenient, the choice of a match not available to store patrons likely killed his world record dreams. Although Proud says match billing and evidence from independent observers prove his record attempt was within the rules.

Proud’s dream of breaking the world record, in fact, lives on after Guinness told NBC News that the decision to attempt the record may have been “high-handed” and will reconsider it. .

Mark McKinley, head of the Guinness Central Records Service, told NBC News on Wednesday: “It is our records management team’s job to thoroughly and rigorously review the evidence to ensure that the playing field is level for everyone challenging for a Guinness World Records title.” However, It seems like this application was a bit high-pressure. ”

“We will recontact record holders and review our rules regarding similar records as a priority to see what we can do,” McKinley said.

NBC News has reached out to Proud for comment on this development.

This record is held by Toufik Daher from Lebanon, who used 6 million matches to raise the Eiffel Tower to a height of 21.4 feet in 2009.

Proud began work on the project in his living room in December 2015, and completed it on December 27 last year, 100 years after the death of Gustave Eiffel, the French civil engineer famous for the tower in Paris that bears his name. did.

“It was my childhood dream to hold a world record. It was always in the back of my mind,” Proud told Le Parisien.