Winning your wife’s weight in beer

I read this over at Brew Ha Ha and had to share this because I think it sounds like a rather interesting contest for couples. Annually, a small Finnish town holds quite a unique contest with an equally unique prize.

From Spiegel Online International

Every year, the small Finnish town of Sonkajärvi hosts the Wife Carrying World Championships. All men have to do is sprint around an obstacle course while carrying their wives. And the women? They have to hold on tight — which isn’t as easy as it sounds. .. The main competition this weekend in Sonkajärvi will feature a quarter-kilometer (.15-mile) course across sand, asphalt and grass, over two “dry obstacles,” like logs, and through about three feet of water.

The grand prize is an amount of beer equal to the weight of the winner’s wife. The contest, which started as a joke in 1992, doesn’t preclude single gents from entering the contest either, as ’stolen wives’ are legal within the context of the contest.

“The wife to be carried,” according to official rules, “may be your own, the neighbor’s or you may have found her (elsewhere) … She must, however, be over 17 years of age. It can be a stolen wife,” Keränen explained. “It can be your daughter.” But it can’t be another contestant’s wife, stolen from on the track? “No. That’s illegal,” she said.

I can’t imagine drinking my wife’s weight in beer (and she’s not heavy) but I’d love to enter. It sounds like a rather interesting couples activity and all seems in good fun. I’m not alone in this; 50 couples from 14 countries entered this year and draws 10,00 spectators to the town of 5,000 residents.

The world record for the course is 55.5 seconds so I have a solid training goal.