Normal blogging will resume next week but today we are out of the office in Finland. Flying the flag for Ireland in the World Wife Carrying Championships! If you want a bit of the action today, follow @WeddingDates on twitter for live tweeting of the event, hashtag #wifecarrying. Hopefully will be getting some radio/press coverage out of this too, so keep an eye/ear out for me! Press Release below.
** PRESS RELEASE **
Team represents Ireland in World Wife Carrying Competition
DUBLIN – Excited couples from around the world travel to Finland this week 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 Ireland’s team in a race to matrimonial glory.
After winning the preliminary race at the Sneem Summer Festival last summer and beating off stiff competition 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. Teams from 10 other countries ran national heats for the contest, including Japan, China, USA, Australia, UK, Kenya, Sweden, Germany and Estonia.
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 “wife carrying drink” before continuing the race.
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!
Crossan, who runs Irish website www.weddingdates.ie is also travelling to Finland to compete in the event. “After doing the wife carrying in Sneem last year, we just had to go along to Finland to fly the flag for Ireland,” she explained. “Irish couples are some of the most tenacious and humorous in the world – two qualities well needed in this competition!” Crossan and her partner James hope to score points with the judges for the fancy dress comeptition when they arrive in their wedding gear.
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 found her farther ahead; she must, however, be over 17 years of age.
- The minimum weight of the wife to be carried is 49 kilos. If she weighs less, she will be burdened with a heavy rucksack to reach the desired minimum weight.
- 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.
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WeddingDates.ie is proudly supporting the Irish Wife Carrying Team and is available for radio/press interviews from Finland. WeddingDates will also be live Twittering the event (@WeddingDates) with the hashtag #wifecarrying
