What Do We Know About This Year’s Field?

What Do We Know About This Year’s Field?

Date: February 20, 2010 at 11:37 am

The Yukon Quest has finished with Hans Gatt winning, beating Lance Mackey by just over 1 hour . Both of them smashing the course record by just under 24 hours. In fact all top 6 finishers beat last year’s course record. Sonny Lindner, who finished 6^th and who will be running this year’s Iditarod, beat his previous fastest time in the Yukon Quest by 1 day, 18 hours.

Now the sled dog racing world turns it eyes to the peak event of the year, the Iditarod. All of us are anxious to see who will have the cleanest run handling this year’s trail conditions. So what we do know about the teams that will be competing for the winner’s circle in this year’s Iditarod? We know that John Baker beat some of the best racing teams in the world at the Kusko 300 Race, that Jeff King beat last year’s Iditarod champion, Lance Mackey in the Tustumena 300 and that Hans Gatt just beat Iditarod champion Lance Mackey in the Yukon Quest. It should boost the confidence of Mackey’s competitors to have beaten him in these early season races but the Iditarod isn’t like other races.

Anything can and does happen. All we know for sure is that there are a lot of great sled dog teams heading to Anchorage for this year’s Iditarod.

We don’t know that Lance has ever put his A string of dogs together yet. He does have three consecutive wins and has a history of turning in his best performances during the Iditarod. For that matter we don’t know that any of the top competitors have pooled their top dogs into a single team yet.

For those not familiar with the new Yukon Quest champion, Hans Gatt, he is a highly competitive musher who is recognized in mushing circles worldwide as a hard working top dog man. He has championships in numerous sled dog competitions but the Iditarod’s top position has always eluded

him. None the less he has been improving and “knocking on the door” for years. And remember “the hungry hunter hunts best”.

What the Yukon Quest does tell us is that after a thousand miles of racing the difference between first and second was only an hour, that records continue to be broken as mushers learn more about dog care, feeding, stadigies and what dogs are capable of.

As we are currently seeing in the Olympics the difference between a gold medal and crashing into defeat is a razors edge. The same holds true for the Iditarod teams. There are favorites but any Iditarod musher will tell you that when they gather for the start of the race there are 30 teams that can finish in the top 20. There are 15 to 20 that can be in the top 10. And there are 10 that can win with a little luck or a lack of bad luck. Picking a winner before the race is more an exercise in “fun” than reality.

There are many that fans are hopeful for, both to win or to finish. But to pick a winner at this point , you might as well guess who’s going to win the gold medal in the women’s downhill race in the next Olympics four years from now. It will all be played out on the trail.

We should celebrate that there are so many great sled dogs out there, for that was the goal of those who first started the Iditarod. It was always about the dogs.

Along with the racers competing for the top positions there are teams coming to the Iditarod for a lot of other reasons. Some race to improve on past finishes. Some run for adventure. Some to test a new bunch of young dogs. Then there’s the race for rookie of the year and some just to say they did it once.

Regardless, it will be a highly competitive race.

While working on the Iditarod Insider’s newest documentary “Purely Alaskan” I became aware of the fact that in every year this race has been run, each year has pulled in the most competitive teams in the world. The same holds true this year.

Mushers are now doing their last training runs. Picking between the last few dogs to make their teams and heading to Anchorage.

What we know is there is one heck of a strong competitive field and that the poetic dance of mushers, sled dogs, weather and Alaska are about to come together in the Iditarod.

Posted by Bruce Lee in Race Coverage