World champs win Maine wife-carrying contest

October 8, 2012 at 4:15 a.m. | Updated October 8, 2012 at 4:15 a.m.

World Wife Carrying Champions Taisto Miettinen and Kristina Haapanen, from Helsinki, Finland, enter the water hazard just moments before second place finishers Jesse Wall and Christine Arsenault of South Paris during the finals of the 2012 North American Wife Carrying Championship Saturday, Oct. 7, 2012 at Sunday River in Newry, Maine. The Finnish duo took first place with a time of 52.58 seconds. "Against Taisto, we went in hand to hand, shoulder to shoulder and he got that big long leg in front of my stomach and I just couldn't quite get over it," said Wall of the first log hurdle on the course. "I got stuck there. We lost some time to him."
World Wife Carrying Champions Taisto Miettinen and Kristina Haapanen, from Helsinki, Finland, enter the water hazard just moments before second place finishers Jesse Wall and Christine Arsenault of South Paris during the finals of the 2012 North American Wife Carrying Championship Saturday, Oct. 7, 2012 at Sunday River in Newry, Maine. The Finnish duo took first place with a time of 52.58 seconds. "Against Taisto, we went in hand to hand, shoulder to shoulder and he got that big long leg in front of my stomach and I just couldn't quite get over it," said Wall of the first log hurdle on the course. "I got stuck there. We lost some time to him."

NEWRY, Maine (AP) - A Finnish couple has added to their victories by taking first place in the North American Wife Carrying Championship at Maine's Sunday River ski resort.

Taisto Miettinen and Kristina Haapanen traveled from Helsinki, Finland - where they won the World Wife Carrying Championship - for Saturday's contest. The Sun Journal (bit.ly/Q30QWq) reports that the couple finished with a time of 52.58 seconds on a course that includes hurdles, sand traps and a water hole.

The winners receive the woman's weight in beer and five times her weight in cash.

For Miettinen and Haapanen, that meant a check for $530. They shared their beer winnings with the second- and third- place finishers - Jesse Wall and Christine Arsenault of South Paris and David and Lacey Castro of Lewiston.

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