Finnish pair win wife carrying championship fourth year on the run

Finnish wife carrying team Taisto Miettinen and Kristiina Haapanen are proving themselves unstoppable as they claim a fourth victory at the 20th annual Wife Carrying World Championships held in the town of Sonkajärvi, Finland.

The pair, who are not husband and wife, completed the 250m course in the fastest time beating off stiff competition from 33 other couples to take the title.

“In last autumn, I started running in the track, one hundred, two hundred and four hundred meters. I think that it helps that I am now a little bit faster than last year,” Miettinen explained.

The race comes from a long tradition of tribal wife-stealing which took place in Scandinavia hundreds of years ago. Winners of the event receive the weight of their “wife” in beer.

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