Iditarod 37

Iditarod entry fee up; purse gets cut

$4,000 A MUSHER: Field capped at 100 teams to fight rising race expenses.

By CRAIG MEDRED
cmedred@adn.com

Published: June 3rd, 2008 01:15 AM
Last Modified: June 3rd, 2008 12:07 PM

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The entry fee for Alaska's Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is going up, the purse is coming down, and still race organizers expect the "Last Great Race" to remain so popular they need to limit the field.

Starting next March, the 1,000-mile sled-dog marathon from Anchorage to Nome will be restricted to 100 teams. Four fewer than left the city this year on the long, cold journey north, but at one point 110 had paid to go despite a near doubling of the entry fee.

The fee went from $1,860 in 2007 to $3,000 this year, with the Iditarod Trail Committee board warning further increases were likely. The buy-in for the next Iditarod is $4,000.

For professional mushers running businesses with six-figure costs, that entry fee will remain a manageable fraction of expenses. And it is not expected to deter wealthy adventurers looking for the unique wilderness challenge that is the Iditarod. As easy as the race might appear -- you just jump on the runners of a dog sled and let the dogs tow you to the finish -- far more people have made it to the top of Mount Everest than have reached Nome by dog sled in the past 50 years.

Expected to be hard hit by the fee increase, however, are a handful of hardscrabble, back-of-the-pack mushers hanging on along the rural road system.

"It is very unfortunate that the sign-up fee has gotten in the way of an otherwise great sporting event between mankind and the great canine athletes," one of those mushers -- G.B. Jones -- said Monday. "The excessive sign-up fee is one of the reasons I cannot justify donating any further funds to the ITC (Iditarod Trail Committee) and won't be camped out this month to sign up for the race."

A six-time Iditarod starter and two-time finisher, Jones is a retired Army ranger from Utah who took up residence in Alaska more than 20 years ago, caught the sled-dog bug and headed down the trail to Iditarod adventure. He bought property along the trail out of Wasilla in 2001 and has been chasing his Iditarod dreams ever since.

He said in an e-mail Monday that the increased entry fee will keep him out of the race, adding:

"The silver lining is that this summer I won't have to be visiting the Wasilla pawnshops" to get money.

Calling the new entry fee "very excessive,'' he suggested the Iditarod should have simply cut operating expenses.

If only it were so easy, said Iditarod board member Mark Moderow.

Though the Iditarod is a multimillion-dollar operation, he said, it depends on an army of volunteers. The actual, year-round staff is small, and that makes it hard to cut much money there.

About the only real option the board has is to find ways to bring in more money. Even with a $4,000 entry fee, mushers are paying a fraction of what it costs to stage the adventure. When last calculated, the cost per musher of putting on the Iditarod came to about $12,000, said Iditarod spokesman Chas St. George. Sponsors and revenue from Iditarod-related enterprises make up the difference in expenses.

Though the Iditarod race is run by dogs, it moves steadily north thanks to power of internal combustion engines. The trail is put in by riders on fuel-sucking snowmachines. The checkpoints are supplied with dog food, straw for bedding and other essentials by fuel-sucking small planes.

Concerns about fuel prices, insurance and a dispute between the Iditarod air force and the Federal Aviation Administration are largely what led the board to raise the entry fee and reduce the race purse from $900,000 this year to $660,000 next year.

The winner will still collect $69,000, said Iditarod veteran Moderow, but the prizes guaranteed the rest of the field will be reduced.

The $660,000 is the guaranteed minimum, St. George said. It could grow if new sponsors join the organization over the winter or if the revenue picture improves.

"The board decided to baseline the purse at a level where we could safely operate as an organization," St. George said. But the Iditarod still hopes for the $1 million purse it nearly reached this year.

"That remains the goal," St. George said.

Among the Iditarod's greatest financial concerns is a threat by the FAA to ground the air force. The air force is a gang of volunteer pilots who have for years supported the race logistically in exchange for the cost of fuel, food and sometimes a piece of floor on which to sleep in a Bush school or community center. Now, the FAA is arguing the air force provides a commercial service and as such needs to be licensed as a commercial operation -- or the Iditarod needs to hire commercial carriers.

Race officials say they're already buying as much commercial flight time as they can afford and that to be forced to buy more might put the race out of business. Moderow said he had no idea where talks between the Iditarod and FAA about the traditional and historic Iditarod air force might lead.

It's just one more unknown, St. George said.

"What's going on, basically, is probably the same thing a lot of other entities are experiencing," he said. "We're faced with a number of uncontrollable issues.

"We have no idea of what fuel costs are going to look like in March of '09. We have no idea of what infrastructure will be available."

Or what that infrastructure might cost.

When the Iditarod pays to rent community centers in Bush villages, it pays not only the rental -- it also pays for fuel to heat the facilities. Fuel oil in the Bush has been escalating in price at an even more alarming rate than gasoline in Alaska's cities. Nobody knows what prices could be by next year.

The good news, though, is that the Iditarod itself remains hugely popular, St. George said.

"We're not losing competitors," he said. "We're gaining competitors.''

Find Craig Medred online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.

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