Bizarre Sport No. Something
This guy (Jim Caple) gets paid to travel around and cover events such as the World Wife Carrying Championship. And he got to compete in it! I'm trying to figure out if I'm jealous or not.
SONKAJARVI, Finland -- I'm less than halfway through the World Wife Carrying Championship course when steroids suddenly make a lot of sense.
Everything is going fine until my wife and I hit the water hazard. It's 3 meters deep, about 30 feet long and there is a fireman in scuba gear standing by in case of emergency. By the time I wade its length, I'm so exhausted that we do not so much step from the pool as evolve out of it, like the first amphibians to leave the oceans and crawl onto land.
We switch from the traditional piggyback carry to the fabled Estonian Carry; but as I lift my wife onto my back, only one thought goes through my mind: When did I marry Oprah? The longest stretch of the 253½-meter course remains, but I'm so tired from the water hazard that I feel like I'm not only carrying my wife on my back, but my mother-in-law as well.
Maybe I should have trained for this.
My Lost in Translation Tour of European sports and Page 2's SportsOFFCenter series has brought me to the farming village of Sonkajarvi, six hours north of Helsinki, for the World Wife Carrying Championship. At first, I'd planned simply to cover it; but when the organizers offered to let me compete as well, I leapt at the chance.
Sure, it might be wife carrying, but how often does anyone get the chance to compete in a world championship?
