When you hear ‘wife-carrying’ you tell yourself ‘it’s just carrying your wife in a run’ right?
The Wife carrying contest, as much as it sounds funny, doesn’t feel funny when going through the race.
In fact, it is not a joke at all as you have to clear some hurdles to reach the finish line.
The male competitors are supposed to carry their wives or female teammate. The objective is for the male to carry the female through a special obstacle track in the fastest time.
The sport was first introduced at Sonkajärvi, Finland.
Several types of carrying may be practiced: either a classic piggybacks a fireman’s carry (over the shoulder), or Estonian-style (wife upside-down on his back with her legs over the neck and shoulders).
Origin
A man named Herkko Rosvo-Ronkainen aka Ronkainen the Robber orignated the sport.
Herkko Rosvo-Ronkainen who was considered a robber in the late 1800s lived in a forest and ran around with his gang of thieves causing harm to the villages.
Three ideas were found as to how and why he invented the sport. Firstly, that Rosvo-Ronkainen and his thieves were accused of stealing food and abducting women from villages in the area he lived in, then carrying these women on their backs as they ran away (hence the “wife” or woman carrying).
The second suggestion is that young men would go to neighbouring villages, and abduct women to forcibly marry, often women who were already married.
These wives were also carried on the backs of the young men; this was referred to as “the practice of wife stealing”.
Lastly, is the idea that Rosvo-Ronkainen trained his thieves to be “faster and stronger” by carrying big, heavy sacks on their backs, from which evolved this sport.
Wife carrying has grown from ordinary hobby or fun to being contested for in countries like Australia, the United States, India, Germany, the UK, and other parts of the world besides Finland and nearby Sweden, Estonia, and Latvia, and the sport has a category in the Guinness Book of Records.
There are rules guiding the sport with of them being that;
The ‘wife’ must be over 17 years old
The ‘wife’ must weigh at least 49 kilograms
You do not have to be married to the ‘wife’, any suitable female will do
Dropping and bouncing the ‘wife’ incurs a 15 second “fine”
You must have fun!
In 2018 and 2019, the race was won by Vytautas Kirkliauskas and Neringa Kirkliauskiene from Lithuania, winning by 66.7 seconds.
