SCOTT GULLEDGE / Scroll
Claudiu Bora, a senior from Transylvania, Romania, runs the stadium stairs attempting to break a world record. A knee injury forced him to quit.

World record attempt foiled by knee injury

Megan Ransom RAN04008@BYUI.EDU Campus Assistant Editor

Claudiu Bora, a senior from Transylvania, Romania, woke up at 3 a.m., Oct. 14 to attempt to break a world record. However, he was forced to quit because of a problem with his knee. The goal was to run 101,000 stairs in 20 hours and 30 minutes.

At 10:23 a.m. Bora’s knee gave out after 25,000 stairs. With the help of the athletic trainers, Bora kept going, icing his knee between sets of stairs. Bora had to quit at 11:30 a.m. after running 27,860 stairs.

“I think I did a good job. It’s just that no matter how hard I tried, it would have been physically impossible with my knee swelling,” Bora said.

At 4 a.m. nine people gathered to get Bora off to a good start. Students ran with him and tallied his stairs.

“People would come and just start running in front of me, encouraging me, and I had no clue who they were,” Bora said. “I thought that was so cool.”

Lila Gold, Assistant Dean of Students, was among the nine. Gold has gotten to know Bora well by supporting Bora through most of his endeavors at BYU-Idaho. Gold said Friday morning that in his past attempts, his body just couldn’t keep up with his endurance and desire.

If Bora was to achieve his goal, he would have had to run 5,000 steps an hour. He was ahead of the game with 25,000 stairs around 10:30 a.m. Each set of stairs at the stadium contains 70 steps. Bora rested in between running 14 sets of stairs.

“I’m a little bit down, obviously, but I’ll come back stronger and better and try again next year,” Bora said.