Stampede Family Day sees a new world record broken

The Calgary Stampede celebrated Family Day on Sunday, an annual tradition where admission is free for everybody up until 11 a.m. and a pancake breakfast is served up starting at 8 a.m.

Thousands flocked to the park to take in the event and witness a free show afterwards.

“They did martial arts and skip rope,” said Sophia Angall, who attended the grounds with her family.

Although many were intrigued by the sights and sounds of the grounds, it was a free pancake breakfast that attracted tens of thousands of people out.

A line snaked its way through the midway as volunteers were serving up thousands of pancakes.

The Stampede hoped to achieve a Guinness Book of World Records by serving the most pancakes in an eight hour span.

“I am looking to make sure that nobody is trigger happy on the counter,” said Lauren Millett, who was one of the independent witnesses to the count.

“And that the pancakes are the perfect size, so that we can beat that record.”

That size being five inches in diameter, or 12.7 centimetres.

“So with all of our records, each one has a specific set of guidelines,” said Brittany Dunn, an adjudicator with the Guinness Book of World Records.

“For this one, we had to have a clear start and stop signal, so they rang the bell. We started the attempt officially at 7:03am and we ended it officially today at 10:34 a.m.”

The record to beat was 14,280.

“I had to disqualify 15 pancakes from today’s attempt unfortunately, but the final total was 17,182 pancakes,” said Dunn.

The Stampede served more than 17,000 pancakes Sunday at Family Day.

For Mahendra Lama and his son Nathan, they waited about two hours for pancakes but insist Family Day was about being together - even if that meant standing in line together for a while.

“His grandparents are here, they’re from Nepal, so they are here for the Stampede experience,” he said,

“So we brought them here and it’s a lot of fun.”

As of Saturday night, more than 339,000 people have attended Stampede, with 164,000 coming through the gates on day one.