![\"Toby](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/toby-stoff-went-to-great-lengths-to-restore-baldwin-street-t-OBSOSDKLVZCKHBXLJ5N5JWMMSQ.png\")
<\/p>\nWhen Dunedin\u2019s Baldwin Street lost its title as the steepest residential street in the world in 2019 \u2013 Toby Stoff went to great lengths to keep it in the record books.<\/p>\n
First measured in 1985, the Otago stretch of road was officially recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records two years later.<\/p>\n
It became a city attraction for runners heading up on it, Jaffa lollies rolling down on it, and brought the daredevils to Dunedin for decades.<\/p>\n
But in 2019, the street was toppled. Record keepers gave the title to a road in a small Welsh Village \u2013 but Stoff wasn\u2019t having it.<\/p>\n
Seven years on, he told 1News that seeing the Dunedin street dethroned felt like “an alarm bell went off”.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, that\u2019s just wrong, and I thought it\u2019s just one of those things, you can grizzle about it or do something about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked if he felt people were behind his cause at the time, Stoff gave a true Kiwi response: “Yeah nah 100%.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Toby Stoff went to great lengths to restore Baldwin Street to the record books. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
Stoff said the Welsh had “spotted a loop hole” and they had “measured on the inside where it was much steeper” but “ignored what happens over the rest of the carriageway”.<\/p>\n
He explained “two cobbers of mine” had asked if they got a funding page going, would he go over and measure it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s geometry, it\u2019s engineering rules, there\u2019s a gradient\u2026 this is the sort of thing I do on a daily basis. Like I go and I can measure streets and design streets.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, that\u2019s exactly what he did.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just sort of ‘stealthed’ in\u2026 and we didn\u2019t tell anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
After making the trip and taking the measurements, nine months later, Guinness agreed, and New Zealand\u2019s title was officially restored.<\/p>\n
Stoff now has a plaque at the top of one of Dunedin\u2019s most famous streets, which keeps pogo stick record-holders company.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s also feeling pretty confident he will never face a fight like this again.<\/p>\n
“I doubt there would be many steeper than Baldwin Street\u2026 it\u2019s hard to imagine isn\u2019t it? She\u2019d be a white-knuckle sleigh ride down the thing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Dunedin\u2019s Baldwin Street lost its title as the steepest residential street in the world in 2019 \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,35208,139,69],"class_list":["post-441107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newsmakers","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}