Nelson lad narrowly misses NZ record

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The Nayland College Hall erupted with applause as former student and current New Zealand Pi record holder, Blake Winstanley put down his whiteboard marker after three and a half long hours.

In his final year at Nayland College, last year, Blake set the New Zealand record for reciting the digits of Pi with a whopping 2893 digits.

This year, he came all the way back from university to be a special guest at the Nayland College Pi day and attempt to break his own record.

L1060134With over 4200 numbers on the board Blake was hopeful but missed the mark, making a single mistake in his  third block of numbers.

Blake walked away with 2424 correct digits of Pi, 469 numbers less than his national record.

“I’m strangely okay, I was training differently and trying to fit it around uni but I’ve learnt my lesson and at the end of the day, it’s still a heck of a lot of numbers.

“When you’re doing the same 10 digits over and over but in a different order it becomes mind games so you’ve got to find your way through the maze and it doesn’t always work out.

Blake is looking to do another attempt later on this year.

“I don’t like to leave business unfinished so I’m definitely going to attempt it again but this is probably the last big occasion I’ll make of it.L1060127

“I know what I did wrong, where to go from here and losing to myself is not the end of the world.”

The attempt was part of Nayland College’s annual Pi Day which saw over 120 students and staff attempt to memorise Pi.

Nayland College Year 9 student, Julia Hamilton beat out her twin sister Chloe to become the 2016 Junior  Champion, reciting 354 digits while Shetal Narayan became this year’s Senior Champion with 615.