Ball-and-chain jokes apply in wife-carrying contest

For one Boston couple, the answer was easy.

Keith Cardoza picked up his petite girlfriend, tossed her over his shoulders and bolted down a dirt path in Maine to take home the top prize at the 2007 North American Wife Carrying Championship, held Saturday at the Sunday River ski resort.

“I had my eyes closed most of the time,” recounted Julia Stoner, 23, who was carried bouncing up and down for 1 minute and 2 seconds, covering the 278-yard course.

They won by three-tenths of a second in a dive-in-the-dirt dash for the finish line.

The couple walked away with five times Stoner’s weight in cash, which was about $675, and her weight in Bud Light, equivalent to nine 12-packs, or 108 beers.

Stoner’s biggest concern was being dropped into the mud pit that Cardoza navigated between two log hurdles on their way to victory.

“I didn’t expect him to be going that fast,” said Stoner, a 5-foot-tall physical therapy graduate student at Northeastern University. “I was bouncing around. I had to hold on tight.”

Cardoza, 22, a 6-foot-tall Northeastern student, carried Stoner in the “Estonian carry” style, where the woman holds onto her husband’s waist upside down and tightens her legs around his neck.

Stoner said Cardoza thought it would be fun.

“It was his idea,” she said.

The couple, who have been dating about six months, beat out 40 teams, including eight from the Bay State to qualify for the world championships in Finland in July.

jfargen@bostonherald.com