October 8, 2012

'Live! Wife Carrying! With Kelly & Michael' next year?

The annual wife-carrying contest at the Sunday River ski area in Maine may have a couple of celebrity contestants next year.

By Kelley Bouchard kbouchard@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

The annual wife-carrying contest at the Sunday River ski area may have a couple of celebrity contestants next year.

click image to enlarge

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 on Saturday 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."

The Associated Press

"Live! With Kelly & Michael" aired a video clip Monday morning from the 2012 North American Wife Carrying Championship, held Saturday at the resort in Newry.

Co-host Kelly Ripa noted that couples don't have to be married to compete in the mud-and-log obstacle course and suggested that she and co-host Michael Strahan should enter next year.

Strahan, a former New York Giants football player, sounded game for the challenge, saying that carrying the petite Ripa would "be like wearing shoulder pads."

Taisto Miettinen and Kristiina Haapanen of Helsinki, Finland, won Saturday's race, completing the course in just under 53 seconds.

The couple are world champions of the arcane sport that started in their homeland. They edged out second-place finishers Jesse Wall and Christine Arsenault of Maine by a little more than a second.

Staff Writer Kelley Bouchard can be contacted at 791-6328 or at:

kbouchard@pressherald.com

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