Wheelchair, hand cycle race has new brutal road route

Yet one thing will remain the same when the world's longest wheelchair and handcycle race celebrates its 25th anniversary in Alaska this summer:

It still will serve up a brutal, almost cruel, challenge.

For years, that challenge included changing weather conditions, varying terrain and plenty of traffic to contend with on the 267-mile Parks Highway journey from Fairbanks to Anchorage in the Sadler's Ultra Challenge.

This year, the race has a new name -- Sadler's Alaska Challenge -- and a new course that completely bypasses Fairbanks and Anchorage.

Instead of the same-old, same-old on the Parks Highway, racers will take a seven-day tour of Southcentral Alaska that begins in Seward on July 20 and ends at the top of Hatcher Pass on July 26. Along the way, the race will make stops in Hope, Girdwood, Whittier, Cordova and Valdez.

The race will be at its most brutal during the 55-mile stage that starts in Valdez, where the racers get off the ferry at sea level and head out of town to climb notoriously steep Thompson Pass, which rises 2,700 feet.

It will be at its cruelest on the final day, when racers -- competing for the seventh straight day -- finish with another long and steep uphill climb, this one ending at the top of Hatcher Pass.

"Thompson Pass is longer, but I think Hatcher Pass will be the hardest because fatigue will be setting in," said Heather Plucinski, a race organizer for Challenge Alaska, which helps put on the race. "It won't be anti-climatic."

The new course is 10 miles shorter than the old course, but many times more difficult because of all the climbing, organizers said Tuesday in announcing the changes.

"Way more climbing, way more Alaskan, way more difficult, way more scenery," Plucinski said.

And way more interest from the world of wheelchair and handcycle racing.

Because much of the racing will be on small roads in and around small towns, rather than on a highway connecting the state's two biggest cities, the participation limit was raised from 25 to 39. "There's not going to be a lot of traffic in Cordova," where a 37-mile stage will be held on small roads around the fishing village, said Plucinski.

The field is already filled, "with a wait-list eight deep," Plucinski said.

And it's filled with some of the best racers in the world:

• Ernst Van Dyk of South Africa, a Boston Marathon legend who owns the wheelchair record in that race and won gold in handcycling and bronze in wheelchair racing at the Beijing Paralympics last summer;

• Oz Sanchez of the United States, who won gold in a handcycling time trial in Beijing;

• Heinz Frei of Switzerland, winner of two golds in Beijing;

• Andrea Eskau of Germany, winner of the women's road race in Beijing.

Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309.