Iditablog.com – Iditarod 2010 News and Coverage

Photos have just arrived from last night’s dramatic first place finish by Jeff King. (click here) to view.

A big thanks to Nate Hobbs who took these great shots in Nome and emailed them to me for all of you to enjoy. You can also listen to KICY’s compiled broadcast of the finish right here clicking here.

Just three hours after Jeff King got in, Doug Swingley arrived in Nome in second place, Paul Gebhardt got third place, DeeDee Jonrowe came in fourth and John Baker fifth. Team Norway’s 2006 entry into the race, Bjornar Andersen came in sixth and last year’s runner up, Ed Iten came in seventh.

We still haven’t seen the entire top twenty come through Nome yet, and there are still a bunch of mushers out on the trail. Four time champion Martin Buser is currently in 25th place right ahead of Jessica Hendricks and Ramy Brooks left White Mountain this afternoon around 3:00pm in 31st place. Former visual trail interpreter for Rachael Scdoris, Paul Ellering is out of Shaktoolik 6 positions ahead of Rachael and her current interpreter, Tim Osmar.

The story that everyone is talking about is Sonny Lindner and his amazing rookie dog team. Sonny, from Fairbanks Alaska has been racing in the Iditarod on and off since 1978 and this year took out a team of all 2-3 year old puppies, and managed to finish in 13th place. With such a great finish the first year look out of this veteran musher in 2007.

As is with all Iditarods, or even all great sporting events the first thing out of any second place finisher’s mouth is “wait until next year”. That’s what Doug Swingley was telling everyone in Nome, and to be fair he did have quite the race with another young team. You can also talk about 2005 champion Robert Sorlie who took this year off to let his nephew race and flew over from Norway to study other teams on the trail. He is dying to get back on the trail and reclaim the title.

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It was early this morning Alaska time At 1:11am when Jeff King passed under the burled arch in Nome, to become the fourth musher ever to reach four career wins in the Iditarod. King won previous races in 1993, 1996 and 1998. Following right behind Jeff into Nome is Doug Swingley, one of the other 3 mushers who currently hold 4 wins along with Martin Buser, and retired musher Susan Butcher. Swingley, who was leading for almost the entire first half of the race, and in a close second for the remainder was hoping to win his fifth career title, which would have tied Rick Swenson with the most Iditarod wins ever.

King finished the race in 9 days 11 hours and 36 minutes. It all started with 87 mushers back in Anchorage on Saturday March 4th. To date, 11 mushers have dropped out of the race since the beginning, including award wining children’s author, Gary Paulsen. The Iditarod Sled dog race, currently in its 34th year runs over 1000 miles from Alaska’s largest city of Anchorage to one of the state’s oldest and most historic gold mining towns, Nome.

There is a battle going on for the rest of the top ten spots in the race, DeeDee Jonrowe will be battleing Paul Gebhardt for third place leaving White Mountian just under 30 minutes of each other. John Baker and Bjornar Andersen also left the last major checkpoint of the race within an hour of each other.

Just because the winning musher came in doesn’t mean that the race is over, there are still over 70 mushers on the trail, and for most of them even coming in with a top twenty finish was never an objective, they were here for one reason…to compete with nature, and to compete with themselves, and to simply get to Nome.

For audio of the finish from KICY radio in Nome, Alaska listen here click here (approx 14.meg)

ALSO: Look for photos straight from the finishline arriving sometime in the morning!

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I wanted to hold off on this afternoon’s report because I wanted to wait until more mushers reached White Mountain.

Jeff King reached this small village first, at 6:34am AKST next came in Doug Swingley at 9:41am. Paul Gebhardt remained ahead of DeeDee Jonrowe on the trail from Elim to come in at 11:59, and Jonrowe herself arrived just a few minutes later at 12:24pm. John Baker was the latest to arrive, coming in at 1:14pm.

Each musher to arrive in White Mountain will take a mandatory 8-hour layover before making what is usually a final sprint into Nome. Its not to late for Doug Swingley to catch some time on Jeff King, but leaving the checkpoint 3 hours later with only 77 miles until Nome…its going to be hard to do.

King will leave at 2:34pm this afternoon and with weather calming down a bit, he should be able to maintain a pretty steady pace. The challenge will come at 5:41pm for Doug Swingley who will be leaving the checkpoint and will have only 77 miles to catch up with Jeff King.

Those who have already given King the victory are now looking at the race between Jonrowe & Gebhardt, as well as the rest of the top ten lineup.

I called and spoke with Iditarod Headquarters in Nome and they are predicting a winner to arrive somewhere around midnight Alaska time. I’ll try to record audio from KICY and hopefully you’ll be able to listen to a recorded version of the finish in the morning! I’ll also keep you updated as the mushers pass through Safety, the last checkpoint before reaching the finish line.

 

Jeff King keeps his lead although the rest of the top five has changed a bit. Doug Swingley continues to nip on the heels of King, the leader since the pack was on the Yukon River and started taking their 24-hour layovers. King took an earlier layover than Swingley who was previously ahead for most of the race, and since then King’s been fighting to stay in the lead. In this last leg of the race Doug Swingley wasn’t able to gain any ground on the musher from Denali Park Alaska, both him and Jeff King were running at a pace of nearly 9.7 mph.

 Out of Koyuk and on their way to Elim now, the leaders of this race will work maintain a good pace and healthy dogs, just as before…only now the stakes are higher, one wrong move could cost them a finishing place in the top ten.

DeeDee Jonrowe, who earlier today was in 3rd place, has slipped behind Paul Gebhardt who was able to arrive into Koyuk before her. The interesting part will be to see who gets into Koyuk first out of a group of 4 that left pretty much within an our of each other. Bjornar Andersen and John Baker are mirroring each other, arriving into Shaktoolik at the same time, both resting for 4 hours before both leaving for Koyu. Ed Iten decided it was a better idea to skip the rest at Koyuk when he heard that the Norwegian and Baker had just left 10 minutes earlier.

Rick Swenson and Martin Buser are are both surprising everyone with their amazingly low rankings for such veteran and decorated mushers. Along with the current leaders Swingley & King, Rick Swenson and Martin Buser have won more Iditarods than any other musher. The four racers combined, total almost half of all Iditarod first place finishes. So far, no one has won more than Rick Swenson – 5 times throughout the years. This very professional and sometimes temperamental musher was forced to scratch last year in McGrath due to sick dogs…it was the first time in over 25 years that this Iditarod legend had been forced to drop out of the race. Currently in 14th, a finish that low would be nearly the worst ever for this musher who out of 29 Iditarods has only finished out of the top ten 4 times.

Martin Buser (currently 27th) is newer to the Iditarod, running almost every year since 1980 has won 4 times, and would certainly love to tie Swenson’s all time record. He won in 2002, when he was also sworn in as a US citizen underneath the Iditarod Arch finish line in Nome. Buser was a contender last year but dropped about 10 positions after leaving Unalakleet. Buser, while always the competitor hasn’t been as consistent as Swenson he has finished out of the top ten numerous times, in 2001 he came in 24th, only to win the next year.

It appears as if Jeff King is either pulling ahead of the other racers, or Doug Swingley & DeeDee Jonrowe are pulling back, in an effort to muster energy and strength for a bliz run at the end of the race. They’re running out of time though, with teams starting to go through Shaktoolik there are just 5 checkpoints left before heading into Nome. We’ll have to see what today holds for our the mushers and how the storm on the coast effects them.

The small village of Koyuk is next, then Elim, Golovin, and White Mountain. There every musher in the race will have to take a mandatory 8 hour layover before heading onto Saftey and then Nome. These small villages are all great places with amazing people. We were lucky enough to be able to travel to these villages when we lived in Nome, my wife would head out to atleast one of them a week with her job as a social worker.

Bjornar Andersen is making a run for the top of the pack, rising to 4th place out of Unalakleet. The rest of the top ten has all left within 4 hours of Andersen. John Baker from Kotzebue, Paul Gebhardt, Aliy Zerkle, Aaron Burmeister, Jason Barron & Mitch Seavey are all contending for the highest spot possible.

With a winner approaching Nome in just a matter of days, I turn my thoughts back to the town that I called home for over 6 years of my life, and left just 6 months ago. For those of you who don’t know much about Nome, its population is about 3500 and it’s the economical hub of the region. Most state social services are headquartered out of the town, as is the major hospital and to get out of Alaska from a village in the area, you’ve got to fly one of the 3 or 4 charter airlines into Nome. There are 13 bars and 13 churches in Nome, and as one of the only places in the area where alcohol is legal, both types of establishments are frequently visited by out of town guests.

Nome is very hospitable, especially during Iditarod season. The Nome visitors center for weeks before the race is appealing to the residents for open beds. Its not just the tourists that run out of places to stay during the end of the race, but often mushers and their families will be sleeping on someone’s couch after they complete their 1,000 mile trek. Veteran mushers might have a “Nome buddy”; a family that they call on every year for housing and a hot meal. Brothers Ramey & Cim Smyth stay every year with the station manager of the radio station that I worked at, and Robert Sorlie stayed with the local chiropractor. We even had a rookie musher’s family staying at our house last year. The family was nervous with excitement to see Dad come in underneath the burled arch finish line after completing such a grueling race.

Mushers are treated like rockstars in Nome, afterall many of the tourists who have just spent thousands of dollars to come see the end of the race will often run into their favorite musher at one of the 5 good restraints in town. If you ever get the chance to visit Nome, you won’t be disappointed. Even though in the summer the town looks dusty from all the dirt roads, and there is a lot of abandoned vehicles and snowmachines sitting around, along with the condemned house or two… what you will find is a town that is full of people who are interesting, full of querks, and just about as friendly as you could ever imagine.

Jeff King made it into Unalakleet as the first musher to reach the coast…but just by 22 minutes. Doug Swingley came in next, boasting that along the trail he had passed King sometime after “Old Woman’s Cabin” about thirty miles out from Unalakleet, but then he had to put an injured dog in his sled, and he lost the lead…costing him the $2,500 prize. Leaving Kaltag 2 hours behind King & Swingley were DeeDee Jonrowe & Aliy Zerkle.

The trail from Kaltag to Unalakleet was a tough one as there is a storm on the coast. The mushing time between the two checkpoints was about 12 hours for a team going around a brisk 7.5 miles per hour. Normally the first musher into the costal village of Unalakleet goes onto win the race, but not always…and this is a year where all bets are off. You’ve got two solid leaders who are fighting for first and have been mushing at a fast pace for the entire race, and then a pack of top ten contenders who are known for boosting up the the speed the last third of the race. You could see Ed Iten, Bjornar Andersen or Mitch Seavey really start to work up the standings over the next 48 hours and make a push for the highest placing finish possible. Bjornar hinted to the Iditarod insider that team Norway might have changed their strategy this year from a “lead the whole race” gameplan to a “make a hard run at the end” outlook. I’ve been looking forward to this stretch of the trail since the beginning; I know this is where the dramatic runs and surprising upsets will take place.