Paralysed Simon Kindleysides has told of his heartbreak after the batteries of his robotic suit died just four miles short of the finishing line of Sunday's London Marathon....
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Daily Mail
2022-10-04T11:44:43Z
Simon Kindleysides - an FND (functional neurological disorder) sufferer - holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon distance in a robotic walking device.
The ex-dancer set the record at 36 hours and 46 minutes - which included 27 hours 32 minutes of walking in his £100,000 battery-powered exoskeleton - in 2018.
But the determined father-of-three faced challenges with his state-of-the-art robotic suit, which provides hip and knee motion.
The batteries weren’t providing as much charge as they should have been and only had enough power to get 38-year-old Simon to the 22-mile mark - 4.2 miles short of the full distance.
But despite his disappointment, Simon has vowed to full the full distance in the future and is hopeful he might even smash his previous world record.
Simon said: 'I’m really disappointed knowing I was only four miles from the finish line.
'We ran out of batteries.
'The batteries were playing up all day.
'We’re supposed to get four to five miles out of them but we got two and we only had six sets of batteries.
'But this isn’t the end of my challenges.'
The former dancer from Blofield, Norfolk, set off for the race on Saturday to allow him enough time to make it to the finish line.
He was raising cash for The Brain Tumour Charity and Teigan Smiles Charity.
In 2013, Simon's life changed forever when a devastating stroke and a brain tumour which left him unable to walk.
He was rushed to hospital where doctors found he had an inoperable glioma brain tumour and functional neurological disorder.
He was in hospital for four months and when he was finally discharged he was unable to return to his first-floor flat.
Since then, his health woes have continued, with Simon suffering from heart-stopping seizures and a stroke since becoming paraplegic in 2013.
But adventurous Simon refuses to let his disability define him and loves using his ReWalk exoskeleton suit.
ReWalk is a wearable robotic exoskeleton that helps people stand upright, walk, turn, and climb and descend stairs. Each one costs £100,000.
The expensive piece of kit - which Simon straps his legs into to use - was a gift from an anonymous donor in 2019.
He had originally mapped out five years of fundraising to afford the robotic legs.
In March, Simon scooped another world record as the first paralysed man in the world to climb more than 1,000 stairs.
He scaled a 225-metre skyscraper - dubbed The Cheesegrater - in London, climbing a total of 1,444 steps over 54 floors.
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