Wisconsin Wife Carried to Victory

When the Drink Wisconsinbly Week in Review Research Dept. was combing the newswires for stories with a Dairyland twist, they came across a headline about an American couple winning the Wife-Carrying World Championship for the first time ever. Acting on a hunch, they clicked through to the story. And the hunch paid off!

Yes, it was a couple from Wisconsin. Caleb and Justine Roesler of Waukesha took home the top prize—which is Justine’s weight in beer—in the biggest wife-carrying race on Earth. So, yeah, now it seems obvious that Wisconsinites won.

Perhaps this is a good time to back up and start from the beginning.

The Wife-Carrying World Championship is exactly what it sounds like—a race in which husbands carry their wives. The competition has taken place annually in Sonkajärvi, Finland, since 1992, but it traces its origins back to a 19th-century legend of Herkko Rosvo-Ronkainen, the leader of a gang of Finnish street toughs, who would train for their nefarious deeds by carrying heavy bags of rye. And it is believed that he and his gang would steal women from nearby villages.

Not cool, Herkko.

Anyway, somebody had an idea, one thing led to another, and now here in modern times, guys compete in a race while carrying their wives. Who, it should be pointed out, are willing participants.

This year, couples from 18 countries competed in a test of spouse-touting speed, and the Roeslers bested them all, completing the 253.5-meter obstacle course in a record time of 1:01.17.

Their victory wasn’t an overnight success. Caleb, an avid runner, heard of the race in Finland and happened to see there was one in Wisconsin a couple of years later. The pair got to work training and won the state title. They then moved on to the North American championship, which they won three years straight. After that, there was only one tape left to break.

The Roeslers favor a method known as the “Estonian carry,” where the woman rides upside down on the man’s back, with her hips on his shoulders and her arms around his torso. Which, as some surprised neighbors around Waukesha can attest to, looks a little strange. But you can’t argue with results.

And about the competition’s prize. The wife’s weight in beer. According to our research, a gallon of beer weighs 8.34 pounds, and a keg has 15.5 gallons. That’s 129.27 pounds. We don’t know what Justine weighs, and we’re sure as hell not going to ask, but we’re going to assume it’s less than that if she’s getting carried to a scorching course record. So that prize doesn’t seem as great as it initially sounds for a world championship. Especially if you have to put the beer in your checked luggage on the way home from Helsinki-Vantaa Airport, they’re going to charge extra for that.

If you think you have what it takes to beat Roeslers, you’d better start training. Caleb and Justine seem to have theirs figured out, and the 2025 North American Championship is only two months away. But if anything is going to inspire greatness in a group of elite athletes from Wisconsin, it’s a wife-sized shipment of beer.