TARGET 091014

Wife Carrying Contest 2009

Excited couples from around the world travel to Finland on an annual pilgrimage to participate in the World Wife Carrying Championships. The tiny hamlet of Sonkajärvi has been home to this unusual international event for 13 years, and will once again host international teams in a race to matrimonial glory.

Teams from 10 other countries ran national heats for the contest, including Japan, China, USA, Australia, UK, Kenya, Sweden, Germany and Estonia.

After winning the preliminary race at the Sneem Summer Festival in 2008 and beating off stiffcompetition from 29 other couples, John O’Shea and Aoife Desmond from Kerry will be heading off to the lake district of Finland to represent Ireland in this year’s Championships along with Ciara Crossan and James Kennedy from Cork.

A special prize will also be awarded to the team wearing the best costumes. No strangers to fancy dress,a participants in last years Irish heats Ciara Crossan and her partner completed the event in full wedding attire – a wedding dress and tux!

Others come a little better prepared for the water course part of the race.

Several types of carry may be practised:

piggyback,

fireman's carry (over the shoulder),

or Estonian-style (the wife hangs upside-down with her legs around the husband's shoulders, holding onto his waist).

Along with the wife carrying world championships there is also a team (relay) and a sprint competition. In the team competition the track is the same, but the three men from one team carry the wife in turns. At the exchange point the carrier has to drink the official “losing the wife to someone else” (very alcoholic) drink before the team can continue the race.

Official Rules of Wife Carrying:

* The length of the official track is 253.5 metres. Its surface is partially sand, grass and asphalt.
* The track has two dry obstacles and one water obstacle, about a meter deep.
* The wife to be carried may be your own, the neighbour’s or you may have just met her by chance; she must, however, be over 17 years of age.
* The minimum weight of the wife to be carried is 49 kilos (108 lbs). If she weighs less, she will be burdened with a heavy rucksack to reach the desired minimum weight. If she weighs more than that, then you will have to depend on your love to carry you (actually, to carry her) through.
* The winner is the couple who completes the course in the shortest time.
* If a contestant drops his wife, the couple will be fined 15 seconds per a drop.

Like marriage, itself, this race is not for the faint of heart.

But in the end - it is most definitely worth it.

The sport originated as a joke in Finland, supposedly reminiscent of a past in which men courted women by running to their village, picking them up, and carrying them off. The Wife Carrying Contest has very deep roots in Sonkajärvi's local history, despite its humorous aspect. In the late 1800s a brigand called Rosvo-Ronkainen was staying in the area. He allegedly only accepted troops who proved their worth by carrying live pigs on a challenging track. The sport is now practised around the world and has a category in the Guinness Book of Records.

FEEDBACK MAP

If you gained information in your session which was not covered in the feedback, please take a look at these sites:


Wikipedia
The National Post (includes a video)

Many thanks to Ray McClure for suggesting and programming this target.