Thousands of fans lined Fourth AvenueSaturday to cheer on 56 mushers at the ceremonial start of the 27th annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, the longest and most famous sled dog race in the world. And the most expensive. "It takes a tremendous amount of money to get to this point," said 1995 champion Doug Swingley, who keeps 150 dogs in his Montana kennel. Jim Lanier, a 57-year-old pathologist at Providence Hospital, doesn't dare add up the bills. "It would be too frightening," he said. There's doggie booties, high-tech sleds, airline tickets, cargo fees, veterinarian bills, and the $1,750 Iditarod entrance fee. Food for the dogs runs about $3 a day, per dog, 365 days a year. Talkeetna's Jerome Longo said he figures a musher needs $30,000 to $60,000 to support a team of dogs that can pull him 1,100 miles to Nome. The first musher there gets a prize of at least $54,000, which is not that much once expenses are factored in. Corporate sponsors bankroll a few of the top mushers. Others have emptied bank accounts or plunged into debt. A few are wealthy enough to bankroll themselves. On H Street Saturday, awaiting their turn to run, the wealthiest and poorest stood side by side, equal in the brotherhood of competition, unequal in how they got to the starting line. The real race starts today at 11 a.m. at the new Wasilla airport. Saturday's ceremonial start, though, was a chance to see who won the dash for cash. One of the champions was DeeDee Jonrowe, whose entourage was festooned in matching purple outfits with Eddie Bauer labels. Even the dogs' purple and green harnesses were color-coordinated with her late-model Ford truck, plastered with corporate labels. "I see myself as an employee of their advertising departments," said Jonrowe, who finished second last year. "We're extensions of our corporations," added Swingley, whose color theme is dark blue. He said he travels the world doing trade shows for his sponsors when not racing. Down the street, rookie Daniel Dent seemed intense as his departure time neared. The 57-year-old owns an investment firm managing more than a billion dollars worth of portfolios. His Baltimore home, which has an elevator, is the city's biggest, he said. He's running a team of dogs that belong to Kasilof musher Tim Osmar. "While I've got an abundance of financial wealth, I don't know a musher that can rub two dimes together," he said. "They're driving around in pickups with the bumpers coming off." Perhaps he was talking about Longo, who drove his dogs to Anchorage in his 1974 Ford pickup and works as a chef at the Talkeetna Road House. As he harnessed up his dogs Saturday, he was wearing an old, dirty coat with matted feather insulation. "I'm one of the have-nots," Longo said. Originally from Kennebunkport, Maine,Longo worked as a cook in the summer home of former President George Bush. He said he wears L.L. Beanclothing, all hand-me-downs from the wealthy residents of Kennebunkport. "Whatever people throw away, I grab," Joe Garnie from Teller figures he can beat the well-heeled mushers with experience. Garnie, 46, who's started 14 Iditarods including a second-place finish in 1986, grew up in the pre-snowmobile era when every male was destined to be a dog driver, he said. To this day, he still depends on his dogs to travel. "I have never boughta dog," he said, "and I compete with guys who have paid $10,000 for a dog." Last year, Garnie used an old-style sled and came in 16th. This year, he said, he found more sponsors and bought a new sled that weighs half as much. Rick Mackey of Nenana, the 1983 champion, is one of the frontrunners - but not in the race for sponsors. He is one of only three people who have won both the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest, but he only has one sponsor, Clear TV, a satellite dish company owned by a buddy. He had to sell 20 dogs to raise money for the race, he said, and an Anchorage couple held a fund-raiser that netted him $3,000. He wishes he had more sponsors, but he's a lousy salesman and gets discouraged when he's rejected. For the foreign racers, just getting to Anchorage is an ordeal - never mind Nome. There are five running this year. Two are from Norway, and the rest are from England, Australia, Canada. Rookie Harald Tunheim had to drive his team 1,367 miles, from Alta, Norway (240 miles north of the Arctic Circle) to the airport at Goteborg, Sweden. From there, he and his dogs flew across the North Pole in a cargo plane to Fairbanks. The flight cost $10,000. This year's purse, from $450,000 to $500,000, will be divided up by the top-20 mushers, with the others getting $1,049. Tunheim said he needs some of that money. "I have no money to get home if I don't," he said.
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