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July 8 (UPI) -- Vytatutas Kirkliauskas, with his wife Neringa, traversed a muddy course and won the annual wife-carrying championships in Finland on Saturday. It was the second consecutive victory for the Lithuanian couple in the international event, held for the 31st time in Sonkajarvi, Finland. They ran an 830-foot obstacle course, walking in mud and crossing waist-high water and wooden barriers in one minute and 6.72 seconds. Their finish was only one second better than the effort of six-time winner Taisto Miettinen and new partner Katja Kovanen, but enough to win the prize of the wife's weight in beer.

NEWRY, Maine — A Maine couple has taken the crown in the North American Wife Carrying Championship over a course that featured a muddy water hole and two log obstacles. Dave and Lacey Castro of Lewiston beat a field of 41 teams to win the competition Saturday at Sunday River ski resort in Newry. They covered the 278-yard course in 54.45 seconds. For their effort, the couple won Lacey's weight in beer and five times her weight in cash — $485. In all, teams from 11 states competed in the 10th annual race in which a man has to carry...

Julia Galvin came to Finland looking for a man that would carry her 120 kg over a 253-metres track - the incentive being the chance to win the wife-carrying world title and beer worth her body weight. In the end the Irish woman was carried by an English man through a pool and across hurdles. She did not make the gold, but said she would keep trying until the title and the beer was hers. "I think I am worth carrying because I am a walking party," she said. Wife-carrying is one of a host of bizarre contests that Finns,...

Estonians reign at wife-carrying championships SONKAJARVI, Finland (Reuters) - Finishing upside down clinging to a man's back may not be the most graceful way of winning gold, but it sure helped Sandra Kullas and Margo Uusorg to the world wife-carrying crown on Saturday. The Estonians were among 40 pairs from eight countries who competed in the annual event in Sonkajarvi, in central Finland. They raced along a 250-meter track, complete with pools and hurdles, with the men running or walking and carrying the women on their backs. The championship, being held for the 11th time, evokes the legend of robber...

CREDIT: Martti Kainulainen-Lehtikuva Contestants in the 2001 Wife Carrying World Championships, in Sonkajarvi, Finland, hustle through the water obstacle. But Canadian teens Zach Smith and Erin Moody, who won the Canadian version of the championships, are not eligible for the world event today. The world Wife Carrying Championships begin in Finland today, but the Canadian national champions won't be going. For three days more than 7,000 people are expected to attend the championships in Sonkajärvi, a town of 6,000, with the top prize being the winning woman's weight in beer. The Estonians --who have won the title for the...

Estonians Prove World Beaters at Wife-Carrying Mon Jul 8, 3:40 PM ET By Paul de Bendern SONKAJARVI, Finland (Reuters) - Estonians ran off with the world wife-carrying title for the fifth year in a row despite new rules on the weight of the spouse. Using the trademark "Estonia carry," in which the woman squeezes her thighs on the sides of the man's face while hanging upside down along his back, Meelis Tammre, 24, and Anna Zilberberg, 21, were fastest round the 278-yard course. Thirty-six couples from eight countries took part in the event, in which a man has to carry...