Iditablog.com – Iditarod 2010 News and Coverage

If it seems odd at a time like this to break into the action, think how odd it felt for me to leave race headquarters around 8pm for a pre-scheduled auction, to raise money for the AAS Queen contest.

They were auctioning off Iditarod & Nome memorabilia. I got suckered into buying an Iditarod checkpoint drop sack from Joe Reddington Sr, for $30.

Then King and Seavey hit Safety and I had to leave……

21:02 – Seavey into Safety – King in sight

21:06 – King into Safety

Before I get to the story, King & Seavey just left Solomon within minutes of each other, and I just got a report from a pilot that landed a few moments ago that Seavey is now in the lead, he witnessed this from the air, just out of Solomon.

Kudos to Kevin Klott from ADN for reporting the following story:

(http://www.adn.com/sports/story/358945.html)

…..Who gets it done could become an issue tonight.

Perhaps the most interesting twist in this race could unfold when the first musher across the line discovers he has been duped by race organizers. Whoever crosses first underneath the burled arch – the same monument used for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race — might not be the winner.

“There was a question (at a 3-1/2 hour mushers meeting) about how we were doing the (race) time,” race marshal Al Crane said Wednesday morning.

Mushers asked Crane, “How could you add minutes (secretly) at the checkpoints” to offset the two-minute gaps in the staggered start of 16 teams.

Mushers didn’t understand how easy it was, Crane said, so he told them the time differential wouldn’t be made up at all.

“Nobody is going to screw with the times (on the trail),” Crane said. “I don’t understand why they had a problem with the time differential. OK, the first team that comes back wins. I’ll explain (adding the time) after the fact. Nobody’s going to get hurt by it. (Now) they all have the same strategy – they want to win.”

Mushers thus departed Nome with the idea there would be no time differential, meaning each musher technically left at 10 a.m., despite the two-minute staggered start. Considering there are no mandatory rests, race marshal Al Crane said, there was no place to make up the time.

But really, to keep things fair, Crane said, the time will be made up when each musher crosses the finish line. The winner will be based on the best total elapsed time.

“I don’t want them to know all the information,” Crane said.

Theoretically, of course, whose first across the finish line and who is first on elapsed time might prove a moot point. Of the three frontrunners going for the biggest payout in the history of an Alaska professional sporting event, King left Front Street in Nome only four minutes ahead of Seavey and 10 minutes ahead of Mackey.

Mitch Seavey became the second musher to reach the checkpoint of Timber, at 16:22. Because Jeff King (who was there early this afternoon) hasn’t reached Topkok yet (its only 16 miles away) one could assume that while Mackey and Seavey spent their time resting in Council, King decided to head on and get his rest in Timber. He arrived there at 13:03, so has been there for quite some time now. Once these guys start, its pretty safe to assume that they will be headed straight into Nome. They are 85 miles from Nome (Council) or 67 miles from Nome (Timber). They are getting as much rest in this leg of the race as possible in order to sprint to the finish line as they would in Iditarod from White Mountain (which is 77 miles from Nome). I mentioned earlier that the trail from White Mountain intersects with the AAS trail after or around timber (before topkok). Once these teams hit that area of the trail, both the musher and the dogs will know exactly where they are, and where they are going. The trail from Council to Nome is going to be nice, hardpacked, and wide…. its a very common route for folks in this area.

Interesting strategy just coming in over the ham from the Boston checkpoint (at 17:10), Ramy Brooks got in a little while ago, but came in the back way and is setup up in the trees behind the checkpoint, but hasn’t signed in yet. Look for his incoming time to Boston to most likely be his outgoing time as he will probably checkin after he has finished resting.

Posted in the comments section, from Marlene Moto, a resident of Deering (which was only a 45 minute snow machine ride to Candle).

I was at candle to witness the top 10 mushers in and outta there, king waited in candle just when mackey was coming in, he came in just in time to sign in and take off, I’m sure king heard me yellin “welcome to candle Lance , bye!” (then i yelled)”WAY TO GO LANCE, WAY TO GO”witnessing this outcome MAKES a grown women like me wanna cry. I’m a former vet student from the chucki college at kotzebue (thru university of alaska fairbanks). All the dogs looked lively, seaveys team wanted to keep going while he was feeding them, so did brooks team. Looks like all the dogs are in their best racing SPIRITS themselves. One of the race officials at the candle check point said “my gosh this is a TOTALLY different race than the iditarod, kusko-300, kobuk 440″ or any other races he’s seen so far. The race officials have good ham radio operations for this race, also the locals like the shermans, weinards, fairbanks and kotzebue-buckland-deering people are using vhf radios channel 68 for communicating, in case sno-go problems,Vic Lawyor a pilot and a candle local himself has been busy himself with the planes coming in on the “Candle River”makes shift airport, we even had the last born “candle kid”dickie moto sr.”there (born in the middle 60’s) to witness this historical event. In the end everyone there was making sure the Candle end is having a safe trip there, dog’s first. Vets, Race Officials, and People from all walks of life are having the best welcome for mushers in and otta there,”GOOD LUCK”to the WINNER, and thank you all for mushing in this historical event, MAY GOD RICHLEY BLESS YOU ALL

13:03 this afternoon Jeff King arrived into the checkpoint of Timber (67 miles from Nome), while Mitch Seavey and Lance Mackey were resting in Council (85 miles from Nome). At that time, Seavey had been resting for 3 hours, and Mackey had been resting atleast 2. Because there are no outbound times from each checkpoint, we don’t know if they continued to rest after 13:00, or if they shortly after headed out on the trail.

Jeff has been pulling further and further away, but doing so by using Lance’s Iditarod strategy, take shorter breaks. Has he learned from Lance, or are Lance & Seavey planning on the fact that King has got to let up sometime. Something important to note is that while trail into Timber was pretty tough (tougher for support teams & snowmachines than it was for dog teams). Once teams leave Timber, they will be joining up on where the Iditarod Trail meets the Sweepstakes trail, both mushers and dogs know this area well, and the trail will be perfect for running.

Also interesting is that while weather is pretty nice right now, we’re expecting a mini-storm to hit some of the teams that aren’t in the lead pack, slowing down their time into Nome.

Now, I want to clarify a correction that we’ve mentioned in a few audio podcasts, and briefly in a written one, all regarding Hugh Neff scratching from the race. We earlier reported from the Race Director that Hugh’s scratch wasn’t due to an injury to himself, or to his dogs, but because of harsh trail conditions. That information was early, and ended up not being correct. Official communication coming from the judges has been so sparse that it took even the race director quite a while before getting word on the scratches. In fact, there was no press release issued on Hugh’s scratch until over 24 hours after it happened. Mike Santos’ release took over 12. Hugh’s partner, Tamra was on his support team and wanted to set the story straight as to exactally why their team isn’t racing anymore.
She said first off that it wasn’t because of a tough trail, Hugh signed up for this race because he was looking forward to a tough trail, and was in 4th place when he scratched. We had reported later that it was issues with his support team, and she was more than happy to elaborate on what those problems were. She said the trail between Telephone and Haven on the way north was tough, just like everyone was expecting…what they weren’t expecting was that because of the lack of snow, it would be tougher on snowmachines than it was on the dog teams, most mushers beat their support teams into Haven. Tamra, along with a hired local musher got into some trouble on their snow machines on the trail, and after a period of time had passed, they were diverting teams up a steep hill through these stuck machines. The hired local musher all of a sudden then decided that he was going to help another musher’s crew, got his machine going, and left Tamra in the middle of nowhere. She was finally able to get free and took her machine (without supplies) to met Neff in Haven. When Neff learned of the loss of one of his crew members, he didn’t see how he would be able to compete. He is now running his dogs back on the trail into Nome and we will attempt to speak with him once he returns.

Nate & I sit down again (in a very cold studio) and talk for almost 20 minutes this morning on what has transpired since last night.

In this podcast we cover:

• Current Standings
• Can mushers maintain this pace into Nome?
• When will the first musher arrive?
• What is going on with start differentials?
• Scratch Updates
• What can we learn from 2007 Kobuk 440?
• Where is everyone else right now?

We’ll have more as the morning goes on! – (click here) to download the podcast

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