Carry my wife, please!

It's not about sexism, says John Lund, America's wife-carrying champion. It's about sportsmanship.

Sure, the sport of wife carrying traces its roots to Rosvo-Ronkainen, a bandit from Finland, who in the late 1800s challenged men to steal wives from neighboring villages. But nowadays, wife carrying is about athleticism, Lund says. And no wives are carried without permission.

''I think because both partners are willing, it's fun," says Lund, 28, a Wenham native now living in Cambridge. ''As long as it's consensual carrying, it's OK."

Lund will represent the United States at the annual international Wife Carrying Competition in Sonkajärvi, Finland, in July.

Wife carrying has been the main attraction at the Sonkajärvi County Fair since 1992. Contestants carry their ''wives" -- who may be a wife, a friend, a neighbor, or relative, anyone who says yes and is at least 17 years old and 108 pounds -- through a 253.5-meter course -- about 832 feet -- that includes two hurdles and a water obstacle. The fastest couple wins the title and the ''wife's" weight in beer.

Lund, a mover who works for Gentle Giant in Beverly and Somerville, discovered the sport when he was studying abroad in the Czech Republic as a Northeastern University student.

Some Finnish friends on his trip told Lund that at 6 foot 5 inches and 215 pounds, with a background in rowing and running, he might make the perfect wife carrier.

When Lund returned to the United States, he began researching the sport online and was pleased to find that the North American Wife Carrying Championship is held each year at New England's own Sunday River, a ski resort in Bethel, Maine.

In 2001, Lund and his then-girlfriend, Anneliese Thomas, competed in their first wife-carrying competition at Sunday River and placed fourth. The next year, they came in second.

Lund had to skip the 2003 competition, because he was studying languages with the Army in California, but came back in time for the October 2004 race. He and a new partner, Emily Bruno, took second place in the field of 19 couples, only missing out on a victory because Lund accidentally ran off the course. Had they taken the championship, Lund and Bruno would have won airfare to Finland for the international competition.

Despite his second-place ranking, Lund still claims to be the American champion because the first-place winners were Canadian.

''The point is, we were the fastest Americans," Lund says.

Lund says his strong finish in October gave him enough confidence to raise money to enter the international competition on his own. He's still raising money to cover the cost of flying himself and another new partner, co-worker Julie Berson, to Finland for the race, which will be held the first weekend of July.

One of Lund's competitors in Finland will be former NBA star Dennis Rodman, who has entered as an independent competitor. The Finland race is generally aired on one of ESPN's channels.

''I'll say he is certainly not to be underestimated," Lund says of Rodman.

According to Lund, the key to good wife carrying is not just his own athleticism; he also credits good wives.

Since first competing in 2001, Lund has had two nonromantic partners who actually haven't known him very well. Lund's second partner, Bruno, who competed with him in October in his most successful race, only knew him for a few weeks before the Maine race.

Bruno was Lund's boss when he had a job as a political canvasser for the Democratic National Committee in the fall of 2004.. Lund wanted to enter the race, but had no partner. He noticed that Bruno was a small-framed woman, and approached her about the competition, simply asking if she might know of any women who weighed about 100 pounds. She had already heard rumors about Lund and his hobby.

''I knew what he was getting at, so I said absolutely not," says Bruno, 23, who now works for MassEquality in Boston.

But Bruno was ultimately persuaded, mainly because she was curious to see what kind of people would enter and attend an event like wife carrying. Bruno says she practiced with friends in the week before the race, allowing them to hoist her up to give her a sense of what it felt like to be carried. She didn't get the chance to practice with Lund until the day of the competition.

They found that the Estonian pose worked best for them. It involved her hanging upside down, her legs wrapped around his neck and her body hanging behind him, with her front against his back.

As a ''wife," Bruno says, she didn't just hang there. It required strength and endurance, she says, to hold onto Lund as he negotiated the course. It also was a bit painful.

''I had whiplash for like two weeks," she says.

The strangest part of her wifely duties was her inability to see what was happening, with her head against his back, Bruno says.

''It's weird because you don't have a sense of what's going on, but you hear people screaming," she says. ''From the way people were responding, I could tell people thought we were winning."

Bruno was happy to have contributed to the second-place finish, but was less than enthused about joining Lund in Finland. One race was enough.

So Lund found his third partner in four years, Berson, a sales support representative at Gentle Giant and part-time artist.

''It was an arranged marriage," says Berson, 53. ''It was arranged through our company, but we're getting along so far."

Gentle Giant and several other local businesses are helping to sponsor the trip.

Berson, who right now is about 105 pounds and will most likely have to carry small weights to qualify, is taking July's competition seriously. Berson and Lund already have met several times to perfect their moves.

The Estonian pose didn't feel comfortable to Berson, so Lund is carrying her in a more bandit-style position, with her body tossed over one of his shoulders.

The two have not only met at the Tufts University track to practice, but they've also retained help from Patrick Crowley, an Arlington contra dance instructor who is teaching the twosome about movement and weight distribution.

Lund says he and Berson will only have each other for support in Finland. Fans, including Lund's mother, JoAnn Lund of Wenham, who has made it to Maine, will stay tuned at home for the July results.

JoAnn Lund says she has kept a sense of humor about the event and has gladly rooted for her son, despite the history of his chosen sport.

''Men used to kidnap women, take them off and marry them. It was the era," she says. ''I don't think people do that too much nowadays."

Meredith Goldstein can be reached at mgoldstein@globe.com.