Jonathan Vero is 39 years old, a firefighter near Lille, France, and has spent much of his life around fire. What he did on the Haubourdin athletics track, however, is unlike anything in his daily work: he completely covered himself in his firefighter suit, set flames on his own body, and ran without oxygen.
The result was recorded by Guinness: 272,25 meters engulfed in fire, more than 60 meters above the previous record, which had belonged to Briton Antony Britton since 2017. Vero also achieved another smaller, but equally extreme, mark: he covered the first 100 meters in just 17 seconds, all while burning.
He trained for three months for that moment, with a mask that only left him two openings to see where he was running. His 6- and 3-year-old children were there, watching from the track, as their father became a human torch with a name of his own for a few seconds.
