Two couples, one from Nebraska and one from Arkansas, competed in a wife-carry (also called a fireman’s challenge) contest Saturday afternoon at Lakeside Speedway in Kansas City, Kan.
The event was a fundraiser for the Reola Grant Center, which has a food pantry in Kansas City, Kan.
The two couples were running side-by-side on an obstacle course until a few feet from the finish line, when the couple from Omaha, Neb., took a tumble.
The two young couples ran a course of 253.5 meters, which will qualify them to move on to the next level of competition. The winner of the national event will win a trip to Finland to compete in the international contest.
Said Pablo Pagliani of Fayetteville, Ark., who with his wife Lisa won the contest, “We didn’t think it would be that tough.”
The Paglianis competed while wearing Halloween costumes because there was also a costume contest at the event today. They entered the wife carry event after they saw it on Facebook, Pagliani said.
The couple from Omaha, Neb., Kyle Thomsen and Jackie Uhing, said it would be cool to go to Finland – a prize of the national contest.
“I was trying to go too fast and leaned too far forward,” Thomsen said after the race. Still, the race was fun, he said.
The two couples used the Estonian carry, not the fireman’s carry. The fireman’s carry is over-the-shoulder, while in the Estonian carry the wife is upside down.
Contest coordinator Janice Witt, who also is the executive director of the Reola Grant Center, said both couples are winners. Both received trophies. The race is sanctioned by a wife-carry organization.
The first-place couple also received beer as a prize, she said. The prize was donated by Boulevard beer.
