"Looking at their gaits really carefully to see who is happy and real sound and smooth, and who is maybe nursing an injury that I can't really identify," said Smyth, a 33-year-old veteran who finished fifth in last year's race.

What he sees during the ceremonial start, an 11-mile trot to Campbell Airstrip, could decide his team's chemistry for the rest of the 1,000-mile trek to Nome.

With hours to decide on their final 16-dog rosters before the race begins for real Sunday afternoon in Willow, competitors are looking for every advantage.

All but one of the top 20 finishers are back from last year. The 71-team field includes five former Iditarod champs and what race officials call one of the best rookie classes ever.

And then there's Lance Mackey. The wiry, blunt-spoken Terminator has dominated the sport for much of the decade and is now after an unprecedented fourth straight win.

A throat cancer survivor who had his index finger removed when surgery-related nerve damage rendered it useless, Mackey said he's feeling slightly weaker this year.

"My body itself is beat up more than most people in this race, but my mind is stronger than most people in this race," he said. "If I can overcome some of the weaknesses I have with my body mentally, I'll be in this sport for a long time."

In the past several months, Mackey has mentored Newton Marshall, the Iditarod's first Jamaican musher. He's finished second in a record-breaking Yukon Quest and learned the Iditarod would begin drug-testing mushers for the first time -- a move prompted by complaints from his competitors. Mackey has a medical marijuana card and has acknowledged using pot on the trail in the past.

Distractions aside, other top competitors say Mackey, 39, remains the musher to beat. His dogs look as strong as or stronger than any of his past Iditarod teams, said Kotzebue musher John Baker.

"Lance is the reigning champion," said Baker, who placed third in the 2009 Iditarod and won the recent Kuskokwim 300 in Bethel. "We haven't really been able to give him much competition the last three years, so he's been kind of a step ahead of us."

'THIS COULD BE THE TEAM'

Mackey plans to bring six dogs from the 1,000-mile Quest on the Iditarod. Otherwise, he's running with a relatively young team.

"If I can come in in the top 10 in the Iditarod with this team, I wouldn't be disappointed. But I have higher expectations," he said.

Smyth ranks Mackey among the top contenders again this year, along with Yukon Quest winner Hans Gatt and four-time Iditarod champ Jeff King.

King said he never knows just how good his team is until he gets to the Nikolai checkpoint, about 350 miles into the race. But his dogs are "clearly running on every piston," he said.

"Those years I've won, I couldn't tell you before the race that this is the team. I don't know that until I get out there," he said. "But I can tell you this could be the team."

Baker too is confident in his dogs. "I'm expecting really good things, and I'm expecting to win," he said.

For fans, it may be the last time some of mushing's current stars appear together in the same Iditarod.

King, 54, has said he's committed to taking a break from the Iditarod and may not run the race again. Each of the dogs he plans to run to Nome is retiring or going to another musher, he said.

Mackey says he won't compete back-to-back in both the Quest and the Iditarod anymore, while 2009 Iditarod runner-up Sebastian Schnuelle plans to take a break from the Last Great Race after this year.

Gatt told CBC News in February he plans to retire from long-distance races. Mushers say the all-consuming nature of competitive mushing, the bruising toll on their bodies and a desire to run other races make it a challenge to run the sport's premier contests every year.

"There's still going to be a stiff field of competitors, no matter what. Unfortunately, the price of the sport is rising," Mackey said.

PURSE DOWN THIS YEAR

The declining purse can't help.

As sponsors withdrew in the injured economy, the payout for the top 30 mushers dropped from about $874,000 in 2008 to $561,000 this year, said Stan Hooley, the Iditarod's executive director.

"I think it's frustrating for (mushers), as it is for the rest of us," he said.

King, one of the sport's winningest mushers, donated $50,000 to the purse.

"For the most part, there's nobody in this for the money. But we do have bills to pay," he said.

That hasn't stopped 22 rookies from entering. Eight or nine have a chance at rookie of the year honors, said race marshal Mark Nordman.

Among the up-and-comers is 22-year-old Dallas Seavey, who isn't a rookie but is a top contender. Mushers and fans alike are watching Seavey, who leaped from 41st place in 2008 to sixth place last year to win the most-improved musher award.

The son of 2004 champion Mitch Seavey, Dallas runs dogs raised in his own kennel as well as from the team he bought from another of last year's top 10 finishers, Aaron Burmeister of Nenana. "So he's got a combined kennel right now that he worked with all season," Burmeister said.

Peter Kaiser of Bethel, 22, is another second-generation musher who is "tireless with his questions about breeding and training," King said.

"A few years ago you could have said, 'Geez, Tim Osmar, Susan Butcher, Rick Swenson, you guys are Iditarod,' " King said. "And they were. And we have been. And there will be others."

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Read Iditarod Live, the ADN's sled blog, at adn.com/iditarodlive. Twitter updates: twitter.com/iditarodlive. Call Kyle Hopkins at 257-4334.