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Iditarod web sites
See related pages:
http://www.adn.com/pf/mushing
http://www.iditarod.com/
http://www.adn.com/iditarod/
John Barron sat in his Montana Creek home early Sunday afternoon, sipping coffee and thinking about the three-part gradual demise of his dog team in the 27th annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. In a surprise move, Barron, 50, scratched from the race Thursday night in the ghost town of Iditarod while in eighth place, a performance that had him poised for his best-ever finish in the 1,100-mile mush to Nome. Running near the front of the pack, Barron seemed likely to improve on his previous best result of 11th in 1986. Barron was very high on this team, partially because of a championship run in the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon in Minnesota in January. However, Barron's great run masked a string of problems that actually began two weeks before the March 6 race start. At that time a virus leap-frogged through the team, and although the dogs were cured before leaving Anchorage, Barron said he now wonders if they ever regained full strength. "They just never could get their batteries recharged," Barron said. The second set of problems occurred during the rough ride between Finger Lake and Rainy Pass. The trail was pockmarked with ruts, and Barron had to drop four leaders with aches following the 30-mile run that race officials warned could be dangerous. "It went beyond warning level," the veteran of 20 Iditarods said, characterizing the messy trail. Yet the remaining 11 dogs kept Barron in contention for a major share of the $450,000-plus purse for another 340 miles. That's when the third obstacle, traversing a trail covered with drifting snow, took the starch out of them. "They were getting weaker and weaker," Barron said. When Barron mushed into Iditarod after 564 miles, he called time out, sitting there for 12 hours. "I stayed there a long time trying to rebuild them," he said. "They had go in them, but they didn't have a race in them. I was put in a situation where something bad could happen. I just had to make a decision. It was the right decision. You could see the whole thing coming undone." So as the lead mushers muster their final charges into Nome, Barron and his dogs are already back at the homestead. "We're sad," Barron said. "But nothing's changed. This dog team is a winning team."
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