Events
Photos from the 2019 World ‘wife carrying’ championship and you won’t believe what the winner smiles home with
A Lithuanian man and his wife have won the world wife carrying title for a second year in a row.
The competition says that men must leap over timber and wade through waist-high water to carry their wives to become champions and the winner smiles home with ‘his wife’s weight in beer.
Vytautas Kirkliauskas and his wife Neringa Kirkliauskiene cleared a grueling 253.5 meter obstacle course in 1 minute and 6.72 seconds.
Couples from over a dozen countries, including Australia, France and Germany, took part in the annual race in Sonkajarvi, Finland, 300 miles north of Helsinki, the capital.
The rules stipulate that the woman must be over 17 years of age and weigh at least 108 pounds. Despite the event’s name, couples don’t have to be married, and organizers say male contestants could ‘steal a neighbor’s wife’ if they don’t have a female companion.