Bristol stands set to 'wave' hello to Guinness record

To say that Danny Girton Jr. has seen some jaw-dropping feats while on the job would be an understatement. He seen 415 tattoos inked in one hour, witnessed an 829-gallon cup of lemonade served at a Chick-fil-A and observed a man pedal a stationary bike for nearly 180 hours.

Born in Sacramento, Calif., Girton is an adjudicator, not in the legal sense, but in the record-breaking sense. He's an adjudication executive for Guinness World Records and travels the world authenticating a variety of unimaginable achievements.

"I have personally experienced an assortment of exciting world-record attempts, including judging the "Largest Yowlah dance" performed in the deserts of Dubai; analyzing a "longest painting by numbers" in Luoyang Province, China and assessing the "largest toilet-paper roll" in Lima, Peru."

And don't forget adjudicating the "largest cookie mosaic" in Quebec, Canada.

This weekend, Girton's job takes him inside the bowl of Bristol Motor Speedway, where NASCAR drivers attempt to set and break their own records. But this time, it's the NASCAR fans setting the records as Girton will watch the crowd of nearly 160,000 attempt to set the world record for the largest fan wave. He is on hand to verify that the sold-out crowd can stand and wave in unison.

Officially, Girton said, "I will be judging a record attempt to create the world's 'Largest Audience Wave', also known as a 'Mexican Wave.'"

During the 1986 FIFA Football World Cup, which took place in Mexico, the audience wave became more internationally recognized and therefore coined the "Mexican Wave," but Mexico is not where the fan wave originated.

If you're wondering where, who or how the fan wave started, sorry, but you may never find an accurate answer. Multiple glory hounds want to stake claim to the fan move, which is traced to four different sports, across three different North American countries.

The Husky Stadium's Web site claims they were the first on Oct. 31, 1981 when former cheerleader Rob Weller (yes, the same Rob Weller who once co-hosted Entertainment Tonight) was back on the sidelines and instructed the Washington crowd to start in one section and make a human wave that rolled around Husky Stadium.

Their original wave saw Husky fans remain standing until a full circle was completed in the stadium. Weller's original idea, working with former Husky band director Bill Bissell, was to have the crowd stand rapidly from the lowest seats to the highest, but they could not effectively coordinate the attempts. The wave started in the third quarter of Washington's 42-31 victory against a John Elway-led Stanford team.

A man by the name of Krazy George Henderson, a professional cheerleader, disagrees with this claim and says hockey great Wayne Gretzky can attest that he started the wave. He claims that the first appearance of the wave was a section-by-section cheer at a Major League Baseball game in Oakland, on Oct. 15, 1981, in a game between the Athletics and New York Yankees.

Krazy George says he was first inspired by accident when he was leading cheers at a National Hockey League game at the Northlands Coliseum in Canada. His routine was to have one side of the arena jump and cheer, then have the opposite side respond.

One night in late 1980, there was a delayed response from one section of fans, leading to them jumping to their feet a few seconds later than the section beside them. The next section of fans followed suit, and the first wave circled the Northlands Coliseum of its own accord.

Krazy George claims he then perfected the method for initiating a wave cheer with fans in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and carried the wave with him to other venues, culminating with the aforementioned baseball game.

Regardless of its origin, NASCAR fans will soon lay claim to the largest fan wave in history at one of the most exciting arenas in all of sport. Just before the national anthem at Saturday night's Sharpie 500, the green flag will wave and so will the fans.