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North American Wife Carrying champions look to defend title
Jerome and Olivia Roehm (center) celebrate their victory in the 2019 North American Wife Carrying competition with their family. (Courtesy: @oliviaroehm/Twitter)

North American Wife Carrying champions look to defend title

NEWARK, Del. (BVM) — Carrying your wife through a 278-yard rain soaked and muddy obstacle course doesn’t sound like a typical couple’s romantic getaway. But, Jerome and Olivia Roehm of Newark are not your typical married couple.

The pair went into the 2019 North American Wife Carrying competition at Sunday River Resort in Newry, Maine last fall as novices. The duo had previously participated in highlevel sports, both being a part of Benedictine College’s athletic teams in Atchison, Kan. with Jerome playing baseball and football while Olivia was a member of the dance team, but nothing compared to the competition’s course. The course included uphill and downhill sprints, uneven surfaces, a log hurdle and the infamous “widow maker” water obstacle. This was no ordinary run.

“I did cross country in high school, but I don’t think my running really applied,” Olivia said. “It was really up to him. I just had to hold on.”

“Running for the sake of running always wasn’t very much fun for me,” Jerome said. “Running is what you did for punishment, not what you did for fun. After I retired from my athletic career and graduated I found distance running a bit more enjoyable….but it is definitely not a distance race.”

Jerome, who is a graduate student in the math program at the University of Delaware, and Olivia, who works as an account executive in downtown Wilmington, found out about the race like many young people find stuff to do: social media.

“It’s going to sound so millennial, but I saw a video on it on Facebook,” Olivia said with a laugh. “I just saw a video randomly and that was back when we were living in Kansas and I saved it as a fun sort of thing. I saw it and thought, ‘Oh gosh that’s hilarious’ and if we ever get a chance to do something like this we should do it.”

When Olivia brought up the idea to Jerome in July that they should try for it, he didn’t hesitate.

“I was all for it, yeah. I was all for it. It sounded great,” Jerome said.

When the two moved up to Delaware from Kansas, they made plans to visit the sites on the East Coast of the country. They had already been to the top spots like Boston, New York and Washington, D.C., but they hadn’t been to Maine. So, they made a weekend out of it.

“We figured why not make it a trip to Maine for the weekend and just do it,” Olivia said.

Before the competition, the two wanted to go in somewhat prepared. The pair, using the competition as a way to get back into shape, would train at a local park on the soccer fields where the 6-foot-6 Jerome would carry the 5-foot-2 Olivia on his back upside down.

“The looks that we got from the passersby were ‘what are they doing? They look crazy’ and whatnot, but we went out there several weekends before the race and just got used to it and practiced jumping over things,” Jerome said.

“It was two weekends before the actual race when we finally got the courage to go over the fences because that first hurdle was pretty high,” Olivia said.

The couple practiced using the traditional wife-carrying style known as the Estonian carry where the woman grips around the man’s stomach and wraps their legs around the man’s neck. The first time Olivia went onto Jerome’s back in their living room, they felt they could make it work.

“There’s tons of different ways you can carry, but the Estonian is the most popular. We think that’s because the guy’s hands can move and he can use his arms for running as opposed to carrying the other person,” Olivia said. “We tried it in our living room first and I mean it felt fine. He said I felt OK in terms of the weight so I thought good.”

“That was part of the motivation for starting the competition was we saw the video and we said we’d be perfect for that,” Jerome said. “We’re not paired well for very many sports, but we’re paired extremely well for this sport.”

The summer before the event, the two wanted to get their family support. Placing Olivia on Jerome’s shoulders in the Estonian carry was a sight for the family.

“We showed our family the Estonian carry and they laughed hysterically at us and so we thought ‘Hey this is fun!’” Olivia said.

The Roehms competed against 44 other couples for the opportunity to win the wife’s weight in Goose Island Oktoberfest beer and five-times the woman’s weight in cash. The competition broke down in two rounds, the first to determine the four fastest times and the second to have the four fastest couples compete.

“Honestly, we had no expectations when we got there and we realized there have got to be some people who are super competitive. We saw a lot of videos, we did a lot of YouTubing about this event and we saw a lot of videos where we saw people who are really, really intense,” Olivia said. “We were like this is just going to be fun. We’re going to place 20th or 30th or whatever and we will just have fun and maybe next year when we have experienced the event once we will actually try to go for first.”

During their trial run, the rookie couple put the rest of the field on notice.

“We were the 20th pair so about 40 couples had run before us and we watched the times roll in. A minute and 15 seconds, a minute and 20 seconds, somebody ran in a minute and 12 or a minute and 10 and we thought ‘OK that’ll probably be pretty good,’” Jerome said. “So we had no expectations and we saddled up and we raced.”

“We just ran the first race as well as we could and when we crossed the finish line my sister came screaming up to us going, ‘You have the fastest time!’” Olivia said.

The pair prevailed, finishing the course in 55.95 seconds, nearly seven seconds faster than the second place team. The duo would go on to compete against the reigning champions in the championship round and took a stranglehold on the race when the opposing couple fell down after the first hurdle.

For their victory, the two celebrated with a $555 cash prize and six cases of beer. They also earned entry into the World Championship which was set to take place July 3-4 in Sonkajärvi, Finland.

The couple had already begun training for the event going as far as building their own regulation sized hurdle in preparation for the event and setting up a GoFundMe page for their trip. Unfortunately for the Roehms, they will not be able to compete against the world’s best. In March, it was announced the World Wife Carrying Championship would be canceled.

“We’re really devastated,” Jerome said. “It’s really disappointing because we had our trip all booked and my parents were going to make the trip with us. None of us had been to Europe so that was going to be the first time we made it over there. We were going to Paris for a couple of days before going to Helsinki and driving up to Sonkajärvi. But, it was called off this year which is really sad, but probably the right call given the circumstances.”

However, the couple is undeterred by the disappointing news. Now, they look towards defending their title this fall during the North American competition on Oct. 10 at Sunny River.

“Oh yeah,” Olivia said on defending the title, “We told a lot of people about it and we have maybe actually shooting ourselves in the foot a little bit cause I have been trying to convince people to come up and do it with us and I may be getting some good competition for us I don’t know, but hopefully we are going to go in October this year and defend our title.”

Although winning was great, the Roehms felt the whole experience was worth it and they encourage anyone interested to just go and do it.

“Just do it. It’s a ton of fun,” Jerome said. “It’s really for the whole experience. There were a ton of nice people there. We made some really great friends and the whole environment it’s a festival. They have music and beer and everything you could want. Compete, laugh at yourself and don’t take yourself too seriously.”

“There really is a place for everybody at this type of competition. The locals come out and support all the people who have traveled to participate in this event,” Olivia said. “There was a wife who carried her husband, she’s a badass. So it’s just a really, really great time. I believe the sport should get more recognition and get some more people involved with it. It’s really fun.”

In terms of tangible training, the pair recommends squats and running for the men and core work and leg holds for the women to be as still as possible on the man’s back. They also encourage not to hold the man’s neck too tightly, but also have the women train their lungs.

“You don’t want to cling too tight and choke him out because there is a limited air supply,” Jerome said.

“But what you do want to do is to have plenty of lungs so that you can scream at your carrier the entire way through the race, which is what I did,” Olivia said.

The pair is still going through their beer winnings, giving them away to family and friends and the money went back into their efforts to remain on top by going towards their trip. The duo may not have had experience during their first run, but when they do take the course again, there will be more on Jerome’s back than Olivia. There will be a target.