Spouses Race
The seventh annual UK Wife-Carrying Championships takes place in the sleepy town of Dorking, Surrey as men and women carry each other over straw bales and up hills in a race against one another.
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There are many things spoken about marriage - but it is often said that working together and supporting each other are crucial in a successful union, and nowhere in the world of non-professional sport is that more true than in the UK Wife-Carrying Championships.
The seventh annual edition of the unique and demanding discipline took place on a sunny spring morning in the sleepy town of Dorking, Surrey on Sunday.
The weighty sport heralds from Scandinavian tradition, where raiders needed to be swift on their legs to escape when stealing womenfolk from neighbouring villages.
Although wife theft is now more frowned upon, the carrying tradition itself has evolved into a modern light-hearted competition - though that's not to say competitors like Susie Wineberg don't still take the carry seriously.
"We're doing the Estonian hold which is the one where the wife is kind of hanging upside-down over the man's shoulders, because then I think you get a balanced distribution of weight," she said.
Alex Kelly, who was carrying her male partner instead, said she was planning on using a slightly more conventional approach.
"We're going to do piggyback, because really it's the only one I can do because he's too tall to do anything else," she said.
Couples race over a hilly 380 metre course, which features an 'over the straw-bale' hurdle obstacles, plus a splash zone, ensuring competitors get soaked before the final bales leading to the finish.
There is a minimum 50-kilogramme weight rule, for the 'wife ' or person being carried as some women carry men and others are same sex pairings. Entrants are weighed before the start of the race to ensure they meet this minimum 50Kg load and any under this threshold have to carry a rucksack of extra weight to compete.
However, the diminutive frame of the fairer sex is a definite advantage and the closer to 50kg in weight also provides a distinct gain.
Event organiser Dr. Robert McCaffrey said that there was, however, no stipulation over the relationship between those competing.
"You don't have to be married to take part in the wife carrying race. So for example, we've had women carrying men, men carrying men, women carrying women and I think that just about all of the combinations and you don't have to be married," he said.
Richard Blake-Smith, a 31-year-old Army dentist and his 28-year old wife Anna Blake-Smith took the honours in a time of 2 minutes, with "Rich" shouldering the burden of his fair lady to a marginal win against second placed Lithuanian's Vytautas Kirkliauskas and his wife.
"We put in a whole weeks work in, running around the athletics track near where we live and its paid off hasn't it, its been a good race, pushed quite closely by the Lithuanian and I could fee the 'burn' in the quads, I don't know about your legs, how are you feeling?" Rich said, to which Anna said her training had served her well.
"Oh, I'm fine, I just held on," she said.
Competitors Graham and Eve Filmer also said their training had paid off a little, though the difficulty of the course had still caught them off guard.
"It's a hell of a lot tougher than we thought, but we did practice up and down the beach, what three of four times but nothing prepares you for how tough this is, we were half way up and we were really running out of breath," Graham said.
"We didn't practise on the hill, did we?" Eve asked him afterward, to which Graham said there were other factors he hadn't taken into account.
"No, we didn't allow for the hill and we didn't allow for your breakfast today," he joked.
First prize was a particularly coveted barrel of ale, presented to Rich and Anna, who held it aloft for photographers after its presentation, though the sweeter accolade many will consider to be the title the pair can now proudly claim - those of "British Wife-Carrying Champion" and "Champion Wife".
Richard himself has an impressive record of athletics achievements mostly in the 400-metre hurdles distance, but Sunday's title could well be the won he finds more prominent recognition for.