How to Carry Your Wife | Ask the Expert

On some level, the success of every relationship is dependent on the couple’s ability to pick each other up when they are down. Westbrook, Maine’s Elliot and Giana Storey, winners of the 2016 North American Wife Carrying Championship at Sunday River Resort in Newry, Maine, have taken this to something of a literal extreme.

Have an Open Mind

“When I first met Elliot, he would talk about this ‘wife carrying’ thing and I had no idea what it was,” Giana recalls. “Then we married and eventually gave it a shot, and it was fun.” For the uninitiated, a wife carrying contest is an obstacle course run by a male competitor while carrying his female partner. The official rules state that “the wife to be carried may be your own, or the neighbor’s, or you may have found her further afield.”

Master the Skills

The official course is 278 yards long, with two dry obstacles and a water obstacle. There is no set way in which the wife must be carried, but the most common is the so-called Estonian carry, in which the wife clings upside down to the husband’s back. “When he runs, he needs his arms,” says Giana. “My goal is to be a good jockey. They call it saddling up—the girls just need to be fit and hold on, but that’s not as easy as it sounds. My sister says I have good koala bear skills.”

Know Your Strengths

Elliot is a big, powerful guy who competes in strongman events. Giana is an aerobics instructor and cake maker—professions that may sound as if they shouldn’t go together, she admits, “but I’ve always loved baking and I needed to work from home.” Elliot’s leg strength is a major reason for their success. “He can lift anything,” says Giana, who acknowledges that her own biggest strength, cardiovascular fitness, isn’t much use in the race. “I always want to take over the cardio section for him. He has the power, but I’ve got the wind.”

Get into Position

“See how this woman has her arms locked in around his chest?” Elliot says, pointing to a photo. “That’s right around his heart and lungs. As soon as he starts to run, she’s going to be choking him out.” When Giana is in position, she locks in by using her hands to grip her own legs. “I’m barely touching him at all. My goal is to stay tight like a backpack, so he has mobility, and I can shift and compensate if he stumbles.”

Face Hurdles Head On

In the championship race, Elliot cleared the giant log hurdle at something close to a full run. (Most competitors sacrifice their momentum to clamber over, for reasons that become obvious when we watch a video of his leap. “That was so close to my face!” Giana marvels.) “We talked about it and practiced,” Elliot says, “but you don’t know how it will go until you do it. You get one chance. We needed that edge, because on the straightaways I’m not the fastest guy.” Indeed, Team Storey opened a big lead coming out of the log hurdle, but the second-place team, from Virginia, closed strong and was just 3.5 seconds behind at the finish.

Tough It Out

“The whole race lasts about a minute,” Elliot says. “It’s amazing how spent you can be after a minute of going 100 percent.” Giana takes a beating, too. “My quads slam on his shoulders, and it really hurts,” she says. “But Elliot is really spent. Two years ago he wouldn’t even speak to me after. This year he was so cranky that I couldn’t stop laughing.”

Keep a Sense of Humor

“It’s a crazy thing to do,” says Elliot, “but our kids think it’s awesome.” For winning, the Storeys took home Giana’s weight in Goose Island Oktoberfest beer (11 cases) and five times her weight in cash ($665). Normally a very fit 145 pounds, Giana gets down into the 130s for the race; even so, she was the heaviest woman ever to be part of a winning team, making theirs the competition’s biggest prize ever. “I’ve never been one to be precious about my weight,” she says, and laughs. “I guess that’s a good thing.”

Aim High

Team Storey’s win earned them a berth in the world championships, held in Finland every July. Though they had hoped to be the first Americans to bring home the title, they missed a spot on the podium by fractions of a second, finishing fourth overall. They were, however, the top-finishing “actually married” team. “We aren’t disappointed,” Giana says, “because now we’ve been through the course, and we can strive to be better next year.” 

This year’s annual North American Wife Carrying Championship will be held at Sunday River in Newry, Maine, on October 7.