IDITAROD: Special Coverage from APRN

With the Ceremonial start of the 2010 Iditarod sled dog race slated for Saturday March 6th, racers are preparing for what looks to be a very competitive field. Various groups are putting together their pools for picking the winners. Here is a breakdown of some of the favorites in no particular order.

John Baker – 3rd in last years race and almost always a top 10 finisher. He beat an impressive field in this years Kusko 300.

Sebastian Schneulle – Wild hair. 2nd in last years race. He thought about retiring, but coming back for one more kick at the can. There was much less racing for him this year as he elected not to defend his title in the Yukon Quest.

Lance Mackey – winner 3 years in a row. Need we say more? He showed he can be beat at Kusko 300 and Yukon Quest this year. In anticipation of new drug testing at the Iditarod this year, the medicinal marijuana user has already had to adjust his race practices at the Yukon Quest, and he still seems to be hitting on all cylinders.

Hugh Neff – trail buddy with Mackey. They always seem to run together, so if Mackey is in position to win, Neff might be there too.

Hans Gatt – 4 time winner of 1000 mile Yukon Quest. The only other musher to do that is Mackey. Won the Quest this year over Mackey and some other formidable foes. He beat previous record in that race by 23 hours with a step change in strategy, running long and resting short.

Zack Steer – doesn’t always race Iditarod, but when he does he is good. He set the pace in this years Quest, however fell behind later in the race when he chose to still do long rests and the leaders didn’t.

Jeff King – 4 time Iditarod winner, and donated $50,000 to the Iditarod prize pool. Jeff is always in the hunt. He may well be on his farewell tour this year but he does have a young team with fresh legs.

Martin Buser – 3 time Iditarod winner and still holds the fastest time. His epic 2002 race in 2002 completed in less then 9 days was done with the traditional run/rest schedule, however his team that year had some incredible speed. He still resists the new strategy to run long and rest short opting instead to challenge with team speed.

Dallas Seavey – Great race last year finishing 5th. He bought Aaron Burmester’s 7th place team. Son of Mitch Seavey, who is a pretty good pick as well. Both of them adhere to traditional run/rest schedules.

Jesse Royer – She finished 8th last year by dealing with the extreme weather. Her training in cold weather this year may end up helping her. Jesse seems to improve her game every year, but modern veterinary science suggests she will be without her incredible 11 year old lead dog Kuling in this year’s event.

Paul Gebhardt – powered by twinkies and always toward the front, yet always dealing with hard luck. He is a master of all trail conditions. It will be worth watching his wife’s race blog, as it is one of the best.

Ken Anderson – Mackey’s neighbor in Fox Alaska, so he knows what a new Dodge pickup looks like. He is trying the “double” again this year by racing both the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod. This has worked well for him in the past and there is an additional week between the races this year (Thank you YQ), so his team that did not push hard in the Quest should be primed to go. After his trick broke down at the Yukon Quest, he will be dreaming about the new Dodge pickup given to the winner of the Iditarod similar to how Mackey was dreaming about it 4 years ago. His wife Gwen Holdman maintains a top notch race blog.

Cim Smyth – 5th place finish last year, and no less then 12th over the last 4. He is always fast at the end and this could be his year.

In the old inter-office, inter-family, or inter-village pool, it was difficult to place your money on Lance Mackey this year. You almost want there to be a competitive race. The list of mushers competing was simply stuffed with the best mushing pedigrees around. Lance was the odds on favorite before the start of the 2009 Iditarod and yet there seem to be something in the air that said maybe this race’s outcome was not going to be as easy to predict as people thought.

There was the weather factor. Tons of snow this year and all the people in the know, and some (myself included) in the not-so-know, thought this snow factor was going to lead to some very different times and leaders. Also, Mackey has a different status this year. He is no longer the underdog that we all like to root for. His face is on 50% of the mushing commercials; his fancy wolf ruffed blue parka is now heavily clad with corporate sponsored patches; and he has received countless accolades regarding his phenomenal athletic achievements. However the charismatic, cancer surviving, digit-challenged (missing one finger), joking, fan adored musher was extremely difficult not to put money on.

We weren’t sure what was going to happen this year with Lance. He was training with a different strategy. Was he trying two shorter quicker training runs or was he just training at times when none of his mushing competitive neighbors could spot him? Did his training of the Bethel Native, Harry, T. Alexie, distract from his focus? Would not running the Yukon Quest effect his peak performance routine? When asked about his race preparatory activities, Lance was cagey and eluded to having a few tricks up his sleeve this year, of which he was not willing to share. But in the end this much enamored fan had to go with her heart and with her head and place her wages on Lance to again be victorious.

Having made the commitment to Mackey, I have been closely monitoring times of all mushers throughout the first half of the race. Switching between the GPS monitoring, the leaderboard and my calculator, trying to figure out who was running the fastest and who was truly ahead. Again listening to the many pundits analyzing the trail conditions and weather factors, which were non-factors, I was as confused as I was before the start of the race.

And then the 24 hour layover took place.

Now the race has all of a sudden become crystal clear. Lance took off after his layover as if the first half of the race was just a tease for the “Lance Mackey…A Musher with Mystical Ability” show. With a time between Ophir and Iditarod breaking the ten hour mark, and his dogs showing no inkling of wear through Shageluk, all our pre-race jitters of Lance’s performance have been settled. He is shown on an Insider video looking back to see who might be following him and he most certainly didn’t see anybody. It is now his race to lose. And unless there is another dog team and musher out there that has drank from the same “magical, miraculous mushing” Kool-Aid, the rest of the race will be spent analyzing the leaderboard and GPS positions of the other teams trying to figure out who will place second.

An early memory for Nome’s native son Aaron Burmeister was riding in the dogsled with his father under the famed burled arch at the finish of the Iditarod. That short trip proved to be a powerful inspiration for the son of an Iditarod racer, and he promised himself that some day he would cross under the arch with his own team and might just but win it. The first chapter in this dream happened his senior year in high school in 1994. He finished 37th in his rookie campaign of the Iditraod, and he dreamed of doing better. But he had to put that dream on hold when he promised his dad, Richard Burmeister, that he would go to college and earn a degree before seriously pursuing his mushing career. Aaron sold his dog team and put his mushing career on hold for a couple years to honor the commitment he made to his hero.

Aaron began attending the University of Alaska Fairbanks in pursuit of a teaching degree. It was tough to let the memory of the sled trip under the Burled Arch Iditarod finish line go, and before his schooling was finished, he was once again building up a dog team and entering the Iditarod. With degree in hand, he returned to mushing with a vengeance, entering 9 more Iditarods and finishing as high as 13th in both  2004 and 2007. He has said that after the 2009 race he is going to give it another break to work with the ITC board to return the purse money where it should be and he has placed his dog team up for a sale to commence at the conclusion of this year’s race.

With this year’s  race filled with a field of strong contenders, Burmeister seemed to take off  with a purpose challenging the leaders from the beginning. Contrary to the pre-race predictions from many of the race’s pundits, he is now solidly in the lead as he takes his required 24 hour layover at the Takotna checkpoint 419 miles into the 1100 mile race. Most of the leading teams including many of those who are supposed to beat him are taking their required layovers at Takotna as well possibly admiring the quality of his very capable team. In a couple days he may find himself under the burled arch again. We know that Nome will be out to welcome their native son home and we can only wonder what kind of inspiration he will get this time.

Sebastian Schnuelle, Hugh Neff, and Aaron Burmeister were the first Iditarod mushers to arrive at the Nikolai checkpoint, and now they are the first to depart with Neff and Burmeister departing at the same time, and Schnuelle departing 6 minutes later. Schnuelle and Neff are familiar with each other having finished first and second in the 1000 mile Yukon Quest a few weeks ago, and Neff and Burmeister seem to be getting acquainted having started this Iditarod two minutes apart from each other and passing each other back and forth several time over the 240 miles completed so far on the trail. All of the first 20 teams to arrive in Nikolai elected to spend some rest time at the checkpoint, and included in that group are strong contenders like Paul Gebhardt, Lance Mackey, Jeff King, Martin Buser, and Mitch Seavey. Chances are good that there are a few more teams resting at a favorite fish camp 15 mile prior to Nikolai often used to avoid the crowded conditions at Nikolai.

Further back, it is likely some teams have chosen to take their one mandatory 24 layover, and this tends to cause us some confusion regarding where they really stand in this race. Matt Hayashida in particular after running surprisingly well with the leaders early on has been resting at Rohn for 14 hours, and could leapfrog back to the front of the pack if he completes his 24 there. Teams will typically take their 24 any where between Rohn and Iditarod and perhaps even further down the trail and this feature of the race creates quite the guessing game for the fans. Additionally, trail conditions can change considerably within a 24 hour period making the time required to traverse the same distance markedly slower or faster then those who traveled that same section earlier. Needless to say, picking the correct spot to take the layover can be a significant deciding factor in the outcome of the race.

One team to watch is that of Melissa Owens who is currently taking a break in Nikolai parked not far from some of the legends listed above. This is the second Iditarod for the 19 year old calls Nome her home and reached the finish line in her home town last year in 30th place. Her father raced in the ‘87 and ‘90 Iditarods finishing as high as 23rd, and she might just beat that mark if she continues on her current pace.