Halifax newlyweds win wife-carrying race as part of first Scotoberfest celebration

It was probably the Estonian technique — with his wife upside down on his back — and his quick legs that secured the win for Halifax’s Troy Snider.

“I play old-man soccer a lot, and she’s a real runner. Like, she does races all the time,” said an out-of-breath Snider, gesturing to his new bride Kari Ellen Graham at the finish line.

It’s fitting that for one of their first outings as a married couple, they competed in the wife-carrying contest at the inaugural Scotoberfest on the Halifax waterfront on Saturday.

“We just got married a month ago,” said a euphoric Graham. “And we’ve seen this on TV, and we thought it was hilarious. We tried it (at home), and we couldn’t stop laughing. And then we couldn’t believe there was a competition in Halifax.”

They beat out an actual Scotsman by two seconds. That would be Darren Kinney, from Glasgow, who ripped around the course (a.k.a. the Scotoberfest beer garden) twice with his wife, Kaylie Dyson, on his back.

While he’s from a country that holds a national championship every year in this sport, he said it was his first time trying it.

“The plan was just try and get to the first corner and round at first, got to the second one, and everybody else seemed to get lost. And then it was just keep the head down and try and stay out in front.”

For those being carried (and they didn’t have to be wives, just another adult), it was a case of hold on tight.

“I was really dizzy afterwards, but no, I just tried to stay as solid and tense as I could so that I wasn’t moving around too much for him and just, like, kept my head back so he wasn’t hitting me with his legs,” said Graham. “It was really fun. I mean, I hope it looked good; I was upside down and my eyes closed for most of it.”

Nine couples ran in two heats and there were two falls in the home stretch in the first heat, eliciting a wave of reaction from the crowd. Both couples were fine; one got up and finished the race, but Denzil Barkley and his mom, Delia Elkin, had a laugh on the sidelines instead.

Elkin was visiting her son from Ottawa for the weekend when the pair signed up to do this race.

“Just because it sounded like fun, and also the prize seems pretty good,” explained Barkley before the race.

The winning couple won a year’s worth of pizzas from Salt + Ash in Queen’s Marque.

Elkin said they practised for a few minutes the day before the race.

“My strategy is just to hold on. I love the helmet,” she said.

And it sure came in handy.

It’s the first Scotoberfest on the Halifax waterfront — billed as a Scottish celebration with an “Oktoberfest-inspired flair” — with outdoor movies, games, tug-o-war, a beer garden and food.

Organizer Stephanie Carver said it’s just a little something to celebrate Nova Scotia’s Scottish heritage that’s fun and engaging.

She said the wife-carrying race attracted the most attention.

“We’re kind of calling it more of a partner contest,” she said. “We really just need you to have two people with a sense of adventure. Yeah, the idea is that one person will carry the other and they’ll go around a set course.”

According to the website for the World Wife-Carrying Championships in Finland, the race was inspired by the Finnish legend of Herkko (Robber) Ronkainen, a bandit chief. During a famine in the 19th century, “his wife kept nagging, and the food ran out.”

He went to live in a forest and became the leader of a group where entry required a demonstration of strength by carrying bags of grain.

“Ronkainen became a legend, and his wild stories lived on, forming the beginning of wife carrying, where strength is measured in a wild and fun way by carrying a wife across lakes, cliffs, and hills,” reads the site.

The first world championship in Finland was held in 1992, and Scotland holds the U.K. championship, where serious racers generally choose the Estonian hold with their partners upside down on their backs. There are Canadian competitions, too — mostly in Alberta and B.C.