Carronshore weightlifter joins exclusive club after lifting famous stones

Fraser Love (32) became only the 102nd person of 105 to have picked up the Dinnie Stones — which weigh a combined total of 332.49 kilograms — when he completed the remarkable feat for “a few seconds” at the Old Potarch Hotel in Aberdeenshire last Sunday.

The Grangemouth Stags rugby player achieved his long-held ambition of holding the giant rocks aloft, without straps, following an unsuccessful first attempt last year. On top of that, he also finished 16th in the final of the 2018 Scotland’s Strongest Man event, having only entered the competition for the first time the year previously.

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The Dinnie Stones are well-known throughout the weightlifting world thanks to legendary Scottish muscle man Donald Dinnie, who carried the boulders with his bare hands across the 17-feet-wide Potarch Bridge in 1860. Only a select few have gone on to lift the boulders since and join what’s known as the Brotherhood of the Stones, a fact that fills Fraser with an immense sense of pride.

He said: “I’m stiff and sore but I feel absolutely brilliant. I got a bit of guidance from a guy in Aberdeenshire about different grips and ways of standing.

“The Dinnie Stones are the pinnacle of every Scottish lifter’s career.

“Because so few people in Scotland have lifted them it’s quite an exclusive club so it has been on my mind.”