March 11, 2007

• Iditarod: Still the Same Fab Four Out Front

  Jeff King with 13 dogs took over the lead from Martin Buser with 12, after Buser’s lead dog Marlin was injured in a fight and airlifted home.  King was thirteen minutes ahead of Buser out of Kaltag this morning.  Paul Gebhardt with 11 dogs and Lance Mackey with 14 were five minutes apart out of Kaltag, about an hour and a half behind the leaders.

  Ken Anderson (11 dogs), Zack Steer (12), and Ed Iten (15), entered Kaltag within fifteen minutes of each other, about five hours behind Gebhardt and Mackey.

  Everyone still in the race has completed the mandatory 24-hour layover, and all but three of those who have reached the Yukon River have completed the 8-hour mandatory river rest.  Jon Korta in 34th position with 13 dogs has been resting in Grayling for five hours, and back in Shageluk Cindy Gallea in 44th position with 13 dogs and Dallas Seavey, who still has his original team of sixteen in 45th position, appear to be taking their eights there.

  Back at the other end of the race, a pack of twelve teams, all with rookie mushers except for Kelly Williams in 54th position with sixteen dogs and Eric Rogers in 60th with fifteen, are out of Ophir on the way to the ghost town of Iditarod.  Heather Siirtola and Donald Smidt are currently in contention for the Red Lantern, close together over five hours behind their nearest competitor.  Smidt still has all sixteen of his dogs, and nobody seems to know how many dogs Siirtola is running now.  Maybe that oversight will be corrected when she reaches the next checkpoint.

  Under the heading of, “If you thought we were rid of her, think again:”  Rachael Scdoris is hitching a ride this year with a camera crew from the Discovery Channel.  The ADN story held a few hints of possible interpersonal conflicts which should come as no surprise to anyone who has been around the race the last few years:

  Scdoris said she hitched her ride on a turbo Otter piloted by Paul Claus, who’s helping a film crew scout the trail for a documentary they’re planning to film during next year’s Iditarod.

  “I don’t know how keen Paul is on picking up hitchhikers,” Scdoris said.

  Vikram Jayanti of Discovery Films said Scdoris isn’t the storyline for the film.

  There was even the implied threat that she may attempt to follow the trail on a sled again (she never was and cannot be a competitor) when she said that she wasn’t in the race this year so she can concentrate on college.

  Nineteen teams have scratched from this year’s tough trail and rough weather, but it’s not a record.  In 1980, twenty-five teams scratched.  What with injuries to mushers, diarrhea among some of the dogs, other dogs in heat and getting into fights, this year’s race could still beat that record.  I’ll be here to let you know what happens next.

  

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