Update: Lance Mackey was the first to leave the Rohn checkpoint at 8:24 p.m. Monday on the 75 mile trail to Nikolai. By 4:36 a.m. today, 18 mushers had taken to the trail across the Fairwell Burn. Among them was Rohn Buser, leaving the checkpoint he was named for a little more than half an hour behind his father, four-time champ, Martin, and leading all rookies in the race.

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Team Norway appeared to be back, an old dog was trying a new trick and the legacy of four-time champ Doug Swingley of Lincoln, Mont., rolled across the frozen tundra on Monday night as the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race shot through the Alaska Range.

At the front was Kjetil Backen, the training partner of two-time Norwegian champ Robert Sorlie. Backen led the Iditarod to the Bering Sea coast in 2004, only to have disaster strike just before he arrived. Seven-year-old Takk, the lead dog that had helped Sorlie to his victories, sat down, fell over and died.

Backen was devastated. He spent eight hours at Unalakleet debating whether to continue before heading to Nome and a third-place finish.

This is the first time he has been back since, and he appears to be running the kind of race the Norwegians prefer: Go to the front early to try to dictate the pace.

Backen is experienced enough and good enough that the others can't just let him go. And plenty of teams were just behind him on the trail Monday night.

One of those giving chase was, somewhat surprisingly, 55-year-old Rick Swenson of Two Rivers, the five-time Iditarod champ who hasn't won since 1991. Historically, the Swenson strategy has been to go easy early in the race, start to pick up the pace after halfway and then put on a push near the coast.

That used to be a winning strategy, but it has not worked in recent years.

In fact, it appears to have hurt. Swenson, who once owned a string of 20 consecutive top-10 finishes, hasn't cracked the top 20 the past three years.

Could this be the year that changes?

Four-time champ Doug Swingley might argue Swenson is just too dang old to seriously challenge. The Montana musher, who is nearly Swenson's age, said age finally led him to retire this year.

But in a telephone interview, Swingley expanded on that by saying the problem isn't so much fitness as it is focus. Year in and year out, it's hard to train at the level necessary to put together a top-five Iditarod team. He confessed he didn't think he could do it anymore.

"I felt like I was cheating the dogs,'' he said.

So he got out. He took up endurance horse racing, the love of wife Melanie Shirilla, and sold most of his kennel.

Nearly his whole team from 2007 ended up with 32-year-old Warren Palfrey of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. So even though Swingley isn't on the trail this year, his dog team is basically there -- led by a different head coach.

A Metis originally from Rankin Inlet in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, Palfrey started running dogs when he was 11. Dogs, he said, are an ingrained part of his people's history. The Metis -- mixed-race descendants of several Indian tribes and the earlier French voyageurs -- are one of three recognized aboriginal groups in Canada.

Palfrey ran the Iditarod once before in 2006 and finished 60th.

He has expectations of doing a whole lot better this year.

"I'd venture to say, we'll be one of the fastest teams out there,'' he said before the Anchorage start. "They're big dogs. We got them last spring. I've got a lot of confidence.''

He would not say what he paid.

"It's all relative,'' Palfrey said. "See the cost to run the Iditarod competitively, and divide that per dog. It's a lot of friggin' money.''

Still, Palfrey said it was an expenditure he couldn't turn down.

"I don't think an opportunity like (this) opens up hardly ever,'' he said. "It'll probably never come up like (this) again with Jeff (King of Denali Park) or Martin (Buser of Big Lake) or any other mulitple champions."

King and Buser, like Swingley, have each won four Iditarods. One of that pair could join Swenson as a five-time winner this year. Both had high expectations heading into the race.

And both left the Puntilla Lake checkpoint within minutes of each other Monday night to start the climb to Rainy Pass and the fast, winding descent down Pass and Dalzell creeks to Rohn.

Backen was already there, but it was hard to sort out just exactly who was in the "lead.''

Time differentials from the two-minute stagger at the start will not be corrected until the mushers declare their mandatory 24-hour rest stops along the trail. Given the big field of more than 90 teams, the differences there can amount to up to three hours.

More important than the time differences, though, are team speed and endurance.

Among the top teams, there tend to be dogs geared to speed (fast but needing significant rest) and others geared to endurance (a step slower, but able to run longer with fewer breaks). It's too early to tell which teams have the speed and which have the endurance.

But some of the people up front are sure to fall away, proving they went too fast too soon.

Consider this:

• Huff Neff from Skagway, the fifth musher out of Puntilla, has never finished better than 19th in four races, despite regularly running with the leaders early on.

• Hans Gatt from Whitehorse, Yukon, eighth behind Backen, has never cracked the Iditarod top 10 despite vast dog-racing experience. He has won the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race from Fairbanks to Whitehorse three times.

• Jim Lanier, the 67-year-old retired pathologist from Chugiak and the 11th musher out of Puntilla, has a best-ever finish of 18th in 2004. He was 27th last year. In 10 of 11 races, he has finished behind the top 20 -- often far behind.

The odds are against them contending, but they can't be counted out quite yet either.

Breakthroughs do take place in the Iditarod on occasion.

Lance Mackey from Fairbanks was 36th in 2001. He didn't crack the Iditaord top 10 until 2005, when his seventh-place finish surprised everyone. A year later, he dropped to 10th after winning the Quest just days before the Iditarod began. Everyone said at the time that that was the price to be paid for trying to do the two longest, toughest sled-dog races back-to-back in the same year.

Mackey ignored them. Last year, he went back to successfully defend his Quest crown and then won the Iditarod. Before his victory, that was thought to be impossible.

So what could top impossible?

Mackey followed up on the Iditarod of last year by again winning the Quest this year. And on Monday he was on the runners behind the sixth team out of Puntilla, within easy striking distance of race leader Backen.

It is hard to imagine he could do the impossible for a second year in a row, but as former Iditarod champ Libby Riddles observed Saturday:

"Sometimes when you get on that roll ...''

Part of winning is just believing that you can.

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Reach outdoors editor Craig Medred at cmedred@adn.com, or 257-4588.