It’s early Wednesday morning and the town of Nome is buzzing about this morning’s All Alaska Sweepstakes race that will kick off at 10am on Front Street. Unlike the Iditarod, where spectators gather along the Bering Sea to watch mushers come in, during this 408 mile race, Nome is both the starting, and the finish line. One of the interesting things about how this race is setup, is that once teams get to Candle, the turn around and head down the very same trail theyoriginally traveled, which means every musher will encounter a team going the opposite direction as they are.
Things start off yesterday afternoon at the public Musher’s Meeting, and coronation of the AAS Queen. The mini-Convention center, which doubles as both Iditarod Headquarters, but this week also as Sweepstakes headquarters was packed to the doors full of mushers, handlers, locals and fans who came out to see bib numbers picked, and learn some more information about his exciting race. I was fortunate enough to M.C. the event and after appearances by DeniseMichaels, the mayor of Nome, along with a Power Point presentation from Laura Samulson of the Carrie McClain Museum on the history of the race, we all offically learned who had won the AAS Queen contest and how much the prizes are going to be for the 2nd-15th mushers.
Janice Doherty was crowned the 2008 All Alaska Sweepstakes queen, having collected $11,224 in votes and collecting the prize money for the second place finisher. 8 other queen participants raised money ranging from over $9,000 to just over $100. Sweepstakes raceofficials say that through one last fundraiser, a live auction in Nome on friday , they hope to raise the compensation to nearly $500 per musher. Presenting Janice with her new title, was the outgoing Queen, CarolineReeder who had been holding onto her crown, and her cape for the last 25 years. While these two items will be passed along to the Carrie McClain Museum (named in honor ofCaroline’s mother) the outgoing queen did mention that over the last 25 years her grandchildren enjoyed playing with the now historic crown and cape.
Mushers each lined up and came forward in the order that they signed up for the race, and out of the AAS 1912 trophy, each picked their starting position. Jeff King was the most excited about the race, and it’s historical impact and was the first musher to sign up for the race almost a year ago. King addressed the audience and spoke about how during recent training runs he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind the images of mushing greats LeonhardSeppala and Scotty Allan traveling that same trail with their teams and their long wooden sleds. King picked number #10.
Jim Lanier is the only musher running this year’s race, to also have run the Sweepstakes in 1983. Jim won the red lantern in 1983, and said that after 25 years many of the harsh memories of the brutal trail had beenerased from his memory. It was only recently as he had been preparing for this race that they all started to come back and he joked that maybe signing up wasn’t the smartest idea. He did set a very reasonable goal though, he wanted to do better than he did last time, which means beatingatleast one person into Nome.
Hugh Neff has fallen in love with the local area recently as he has been spending time doing training runs around cape Nome. Hugh has been brought to tears with the amazing beauty while watching the sun set over the Seward peninsula.
Sonny Lindner will be the last to leave the starting chute tomorrow morning, but just as long as he is going, he’ll be happy. Sonny has been waiting for 25 years to run the All Alaska Sweepstakes. In 1983 he teamed up with Rick Swenson, provided some dogs and handled the team with the condition that Sonny would run the next AAS (expected to be just 5 years later at the time) and Swenson would switch roles helping handle the dogs. It’s 25 years later and Sonny is finally getting the chance to run this historic race.
The final fun story from yesterday afternoon is the inspirational one of Fred “Moe” Napoka. Fred is the co-coach of the mushing team at the school in Tuluksak Alaska. Fred brought three students with him to help handle and observe the race. Yesterday the three drew straws to see who would be lucky enough to pick the bib number for their teacher.
I’ll be posting some mushers bios that I wrote of up for the meeting yesterday, along with getting you audio, photographs, and maybe video of the event….. stay tuned, its a big day!
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