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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.