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HOLLADAY — The Dinnie Stones are dubbed “the ultimate challenge." Anyone who has even held the two boulders is among the few to do so in more than a century of tradition.
Now Bryan Hunsaker, of Holladay, has his name in the record book as the man who has held the combined 733-pound stones the longest, holding the stones for 33.9 seconds on March 25.
“It was pretty surreal because it’s a big enough feat to pick those things up,” Hunsaker said. “A number of people have lifted them up over the years, but a lot of them have had to use weightlifting straps or a certain type of grip where your hands lock in place called a hook grip.”
The Dinnie Stones date back to the 19th century — first lifted by Donald Dinnie in 1860. According to lore and Dinnie’s own record, the Scottish man picked up these stones, one in each hand, and carried them across a bridge in the town and back “some 4 to 5 yards.”
The stones are a pair of granite boulders with handles that are located at the Old Potarch Hotel in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, according to a website dedicated to its history.
Since then, only three other people in history have recreated that moment unassisted. Several dozen more have actually lifted the stones unassisted or assisted. None have held the stones as long as Hunsaker.
Setting the record is impressive, but getting to the Dinnie Stones was an adventure in itself for the Utah resident. Hunsaker competed at the Arnold Strongman Classic held in Columbus, Ohio, earlier in March. The Dinnie Stones were featured there and a new world record was set at about 31 seconds.
That weighed on Hunsaker’s mind. He and his wife Brittany, along with their children, were already planning on a United Kingdom vacation, and after telling Brittany about the stones, she said the family had to make it to Scotland to see if he could set the record.
“We kind of went quite a ways out of our way — a five-hour train ride, another three-hour car ride to get up to Potarch to give it a go,” Hunsaker said. “That was how it came together.”
If lifting 700 pounds wasn’t hard enough as it is, Hunsaker had to do so after the trek, dealing with jet lag and no prep time to lift the stones.
Of course, he believes he could have done better than the record he set. With several spectators around as he lifted the boulders, everyone seemed to count time in various paces. By the time he ended his record lift of 33.9 seconds, some had already counted up to 50.
“I didn’t know what the actual time was,” he said, with a chuckle as he recounted the moment. “My poor wife was trying to yell it to me, but there were a lot of people there making a lot of noise and I was just giving it all I had. I could have given it a little bit more if I had actually known where I was at.”
Afterward, the family made the lengthy trip back to Great Britain to resume their vacation.
What Hunsaker didn’t expect afterward was becoming a star in Europe. Shortly after his feat, his story got picked up by the largest media outlets in Europe, and he did interviews with BBC Radio and had stories written about him in eastern European countries.
It also became the talk of the weightlifting scene in the U.S.
“It’s pretty cool,” Hunsaker said, recalling his accomplishment. “I just went up there and wanted to do it. I didn’t know it would turn into anything. … It went from something that I wanted to go do with my family and do for personal reasons to — it blew up into something I never imagined that it would.”
