Wife carrying championships in Finland won for fourth time by couple
Finnish lawyer, Taisto Miettinen, completed the 250m track, tackling a pool and several hurdles with his wife Kristiina Haapanen on his back, in just over a minute.
The winner of Finland’s Wife Carrying World Championship Competition in Sonkajarvi won the weight of their wife in beer.
Winners Taisto Miettinen and Kristiina Haapanen have now won the competition four times.
The contest is rooted in the legend of Ronkainen the Robber, said in the 19th century to have tested aspiring members of his gang by forcing them to lug sacks of grain or live swine over a similar course.
It also purportedly stems from an even earlier tribal practice of wife-stealing, in honour of which many contestants now take up the challenge with someone else’s wife.