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| 28th
year of Alaska's great race
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1999 Race storiesNote: These archived stories may contain links that are no longer active. Published:
3/24/99 They say that close only counts in hand grenades and horseshoe pitching. How about Iditarod predicting? I did not pick the winner of the 27th annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race ... but I was close.
Published: 3/24/99 Burled arch marking Iditarod finish snaps into pieces NOME - Hundreds of Iditarod mushers have passed under the rugged burled arch on Front Street since 1975, when a red lantern musher donated it. But the arch has been deteriorating over the years. And this year, the annual trip to the arch's summer resting place proved a bit too strenuous. The spruce log broke into several pieces Monday as a forklift rolled over a curb carrying the assembled arch.
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3/24/99 Shane Goosen's dogs may not be the fastest, but they can smell the barn. The Wasilla musher, who finished the 1999 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in 45th place Monday afternoon, managed to break a 15-year-old record by traveling the 22 miles from Safety to Nome in 1 hour, 58 minutes.
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3/19/99 As he crossed under the burled arch at the end of the 27th annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Wednesday night, his wobbly legs gave out and King tipped over, knocking the sled on its side and dumping his bod
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3/19/99 A year after his best-ever finish of third, Charlie Boulding of Manley placed fifth in 10 days, 9 hours, 19 minutes. He was pleasantly surprised, because Boulding had just three of the same dogs, and a terrible training season left him wondering if he even had a worthy team a few weeks before the start. "These guys are quite a surprise," said Boulding. "They did a lot better than I thought. I put them together rather late." Boulding collected $34,320. When his wife, Robin, saw the figure on the prize list, she gave him a big hug and said, "Good going, honey."
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3/19/99 NOME - Jeff King slumped his weight on the handlebars of his sled and gasped for air. As he crossed under the burled arch at the end of the 27th annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Wednesday night, his wobbly legs gave out and King tipped over, knocking the sled on its side and dumping his body like a sack of potatoes on the hard snow of the finish chute.
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3/19/99 NOME - You may love him or hate him. But chances are, you listen to him . Despite all the big names in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, Rick Swenson remains The Man. His personality overshadows all others. His performances are scrutinized. Can Rick do it again? Is Rick washed up?
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3/18/99 WHITE MOUNTAIN - John Baker started snoring almost as soon as he lay on the floor. These were not small, occasional snorts. Baker sent off long, ripping snores that made the Kotzebue musher sound like a sick tuba. After a thousand miles of trail and nine days with little rest, Baker was exhausted - as were the other half-dozen mushers gathered at this riverside village 77 miles from Nome.
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3/18/99 Given the right circumstances, Doug Swingley thinks his dog team could have made the Iditarod an 8-day race: If the trail had been better, if the weather had been better (no 44-degree below zero temperatures on the Yukon River), if there'd been more competition.
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3/18/99 NOME - The 27th annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race almost drove Martin Buser crazy. The three-time champion from Big Lake settled for second place this time. The runner-up prize of $50,000 is nice, and Buser thinks the finish may have prevented him from seeking costly psychoanalysis.
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3/18/99 NOME - The ruts were the biggest enemy. Each time the sled bounced on uneven terrain, Doug Swingley felt the jolt in his chest. So many times this past week his dominating lead in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race might have allowed him to breathe easy, but Swingley had trouble breathing most of the way.
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3/17/99 NOME - Far ahead of everyone, Montanan Doug Swingley, who four years ago became the first non-Alaskan to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, won again early this morning, capturing the richest Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in history. Swingley pulled in here at about 1:30 his morning before a cheering crowd on Front Street to complete his 1,100-mile run across Alaska in the unofficial time of 9 days, 14 hours and 31 minutes.
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3/17/99 NOME - You never hear anyone in Alaska say Doug Swingley is their favorite musher. You often hear fans say they don't care who wins the Iditarod - as long as it's not someone from Outside. Code words for that phrase? Doug Swingley. Since he is the only Outside musher to win the Iditarod and since he is the only Outside musher regularly in contention to win.
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3/17/99 Defending Iditarod champion Jeff King has given up any aspirations to keep up with second-place Martin Buser or third-place Rick Swenson. King's team of eight dogs was fourth into Unalakleet, less than two hours behind Swenson, but in need of a much longer rest.
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3/17/99 WHITE MOUNTAIN - After nine days on the trail in the cold and the wind, Doug Swingley sat down at a table here 75 miles from Nome on Tuesday afternoon to contemplate a second victory in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. The oldest man to win this 1,100-mile marathon sipped coffee and chewed jerky strips. His closest competitor was still miles back on the trail. Before dawn, the richest payday in Iditarod history, about $107,000, would be his.
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3/16/99 SHAGELUK - One minute he was riding on the back of his sled and the next, musher Harald Tunheim was in the snow watching his team trot away into the darkness. For many racers in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, that would be the last they would see of their team until the dogs were caught by another musher or got hung up on some obstacle.
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3/16/99 All alone on the Bering Sea coast, Montana musher Doug Swingley was running away with the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Monday night. By the village of Koyuk - about 170 miles from the finish line - the question had become not would he win a second championship but by how much.
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3/16/99 NOME - There is no shame in scratching. No stigma. The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is an often-humbling challenge and there are times the elements and rugged trail conspire to overwhelm the best mushers and the gamest dogs. It has been proven repeatedly that the trip to this Bering Sea Coast gold rush community is a hazardous one.
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3/16/99 What is with all this jingoistic Alaska whining about Iditarod musher Doug Swingley being allowed to put a battered, old dog sled back into use? By now, most race fans must have heard or read the quibbling about how race officials allowed Swingley to fly the patched-up sled to Iditarod from Takotna, after he broke the new sled he had picked up hours earlier.
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3/16/99 OLD WOMAN CABIN - For a while Monday, it looked like a camping trip at this small log cabin 40 miles from Unalakleet. A half-dozen Iditarod dog teams were parked outside. Inside, their drivers - including Rick Mackey, Joe Garnie and Christopher Knott - warmed up in front of a wood stove and snacked on bags of food, including pizza, jerky and M&Ms. They talked strategy and past Iditarod trips.
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3/15/99 A 3-year-old male dog named Rodman in the team of Jeremy Gebauer became the first to die in this year's Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Gebauer, of Lincoln, Mont., was mushing a team of young dogs belonging to race leader Doug Swingley. Gebauer finished 43rd in last year's Iditarod.
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3/15/99 UNALAKLEET - Montana's Doug Swingley, who holds the fastest Iditarod time in history, is threatening to make this year's race the most lopsided. Swingley pulled into Unalakleet, 269 miles from Nome, at 10:08 a.m. Sunday and was immediately surrounded by a throng of residents and television cameras. Second-place Martin Buser of Big Lake didn't arrive until 8:39 p.m.
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3/15/99 KALTAG - Driving snow covered the trail ahead, and the blowing wind sounded like a jet engine. So former Iditarod champions Jeff King and Rick Swenson came to a standstill on the vast expanse of the Yukon River, waiting in the dark for a break in the weather.
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3/15/99 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.
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3/14/99 Bruiser, is that you? Arf. I thought so. I'd recognize that howl anywhere.
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3/14/99 Wind-sculpted snowdrifts that form roof-high around the cabins of Kaltag each winter greeted Montanan Doug Swingley on Saturday as he led the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race off the bitterly cold Yukon River. After eight hours of battling a 20-mph headwind and minus-35 degree temperatures coming upriver on the frozen Yukon, Swingley pulled his team into this village of 250 at 7:05 p.m. for a much-needed break.
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3/14/99 UNALAKLEET - Out in a 75-below wind chill, hammering the frozen Yukon River on Saturday morning, DeeDee Jonrowe saw her 1999 Iditarod dream come to an abrupt and unexpected end when she scratched from the race for the first time in her career. A revolt by her 12-dog team caught the popular Willow musher as much off-guard as it did officials of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and the legion of fans who have been following the perennial front-runner's progress along the 1,100-mile route to Nome.
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3/14/99 Heavy load for Redington Veteran Iditarod racer Raymie Redington was weary and frustrated when he arrived in McGrath to take his 24-hour layover Wednesday. He was carrying two dogs in his sled, and they were the biggest dogs in his team. He hauled 75-pound Choctaw 30 miles when the dog didn't feel like running. And he carried Dakota, who weighs nearly as much, the last 10 miles into the checkpoint. Redington wasn't sure if he would drop them. Redington, in his 10th Iditarod, dating back to the first one in 1973, perked up, though, because he's convinced he will start catching other mushers soon. "We're going to be moving up pretty quick," he said at the start of his layover. Redington said he always liked stopping in McGrath because mushing friends Eep Anderson, Rudy Demoski and others lived here. "You got a day to hang out," he said.
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3/13/99 MCGRATH - Bill Hall's amnesia is cured. The Trapper Creek musher is back in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race for the first time since 1996, pretty much proving that time heals just about anything. In his prerace bio, Hall, a six-time racer, listed 10 reasons why he returned to the 1,100-mile mush to Nome. No. 1 on the list was: "Forgot how miserable it is."
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3/13/99 MCGRATH - Tim Osmar spent the winter wondering when the state legislature was going to create the 28-hour day. He desperately needed the extra four hours. There are more Osmar-connected dogs in the 27th Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race than from any other kennels, and baby-sitting the herd in recent months often left him frazzled. In addition to the Clam Gulch musher's team, three other mushers began the 1,100-mile mush to Nome driving teams housed at his lot, and another musher was driving his dad's dogs.
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3/13/99
ANVIK - As the Interior Alaska weather shifted from brutal winter toward friendly spring Friday, Montanan Doug Swingley relaxed in warm sunshine and contemplated his next move as the leader in the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. The leader since the race moved out of the Alaska Range and the first musher to reach the race's halfway point at Iditarod, Swingley led the chase to the frozen Yukon River - almost two-thirds of the way to the finish line at Nome.
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3/12/99 IDITAROD - With a stiff breeze blowing in his face and frosty snowflakes pattering down on his sled, John Baker pulled his dog team into this once-thriving mining town tired and late on Thursday morning. The Kotzebue musher had gambled on pushing to the halfway checkpoint, and the gamble went sour.
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3/12/99 MCGRATH - Harry Caldwell yawned. He sipped some coffee. Then he yawned again. Coming to life after a three-hour nap, he pulled on his thick trail garb. It was warm late Wednesday night in the two-story wooden building that is the McGrath checkpoint 415 miles into the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
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3/12/99 Add the name of an Indiana grade school teacher to the record-splitting list of rookies in this year's Iditarod. Unlike the others, Andrea Aufder-Heyde - or, more pronounceably, "Finney" - won't be needing racing experience for her run. She won't even need dogs.
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3/11/99 Beneath the cold stars of a cold Interior Alaska night, Doug Swingley was steering his dog team toward the ghost town of Iditarod on Wednesday as a bunch of mushers behind pondered how to catch up. "Swingley's in control right now," said Rick Mackey of Nenana, the 1983 Iditarod champ. "He's got 14 dogs, and he's well ahead of us."
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3/11/99 NIKOLAI - Jim Lanier never felt the cold seep into his feet as he mushed his team across the desolate Farewell Burn and up the Kuskokwim River into this small village. The minus-40 temperature worked its way in quietly, ebbing the feeling from his toes and turning once-malleable skin into a numb, hard mass.
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3/11/99 Rookie Harald Tunheim, who races in Europe and teaches mushing at a technical school in northern Norway, has caught the attention of Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race contenders. On Wednesday, he was in eighth place. "He's no rookie," three-time champion Jeff King said in Nikolai. "He could win this thing - and wouldn't that turn this race on its ear?"
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3/11/99 The Next Great Race. You would think the mushers who do The Last Great Race would be satisfied with the challenge, that the Iditarod would be enough for them. But when they think of the future, many envision a complementary Alaska long-distance dog-sled event - a stage race. A race perhaps starting in Seward and going all the way to Fairbanks. Pretty much traveling along the Seward Highway, Glenn Highway and Parks Highway with easy access for spectators.
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3/10/99 Don Bowers did not set out to write a book. He set out to run the Iditarod - and he took notes. "It started out as a journal and it kept getting refined and refined," said the Montana Creek musher at the pre-race banquet for the 27th annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
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3/10/99 Until the team went for a dog named Storm, Iditarod musher Dan Dent had never seen a full-fledged dog fight in all its bloody intensity. Such fights are rare these days when mushers go to great lengths to socialize their dogs, but they still happen.
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3/9/99 ANCHORAGE - Iditarod veteran Bill Cotter figures his sled dogs are athletes, so it's not a real stretch to name them after others populating the world of sports. The Nenana musher is especially partial to basketball players. One of his lead dogs is Alonzo, as in Mourning. There's also a fleet little husky in his team named Muggsy Bogues. Some years back he had canine namesakes of the entire Boston Celtics starting five.
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3/9/99 FINGER LAKE - As the first rays of sunlight crested the Alaska Range Monday morning, the leaders in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race were making their way into this lakeside checkpoint 200 miles from Anchorage. First in was DeeDee Jonrowe, her team trotting in its matching turquoise gear. An hour later, Teller musher Joe Garnie arrived in second place. And third? Juan Alcina.
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3/9/99 Two days into the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, the games of cat, mouse and rabbit were well underway Monday night, with three-time champion Martin Buser playing a role in all. Sticking to a cat-and-mouse strategy, Buser charged into the Rainy Pass checkpoint just after 5 p.m., dropped two dogs, grabbed his dog food and left.
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3/9/99 Even before the 1999 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race began, the first broadside landed from an Outside expert on dog care. "I call the Iditarod something else: Ihurtadog," wrote Jon Saraceno, a columnist for USA Today, the self-proclaimed "national" newspaper. "It is a travesty of grueling proportions. ... The race's death rate is 2.9 fatalities for every 1,000 competitors. That would translate into 290 deaths in the Boston Marathon during the last decade, according to the Humane Society."
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3/8/99 WASILLA - Judy Currier has the theme for her first Iditarod: "Home to Nome." That's because she lives just down the trail from the Wasilla Municipal Airport, site of the official start of the 27th annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. "I'm gonna pass right by my house," said Currier before taking off Sunday.
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3/8/99 Jeff King had a great night's sleep before the official start of the Iditarod in Wasilla Sunday except for a dream he had about rival Rick Swenson. "I tried to reconcile the anxiety between us," said King, who won his third championship last year but still is two victories behind Swenson's record.
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3/8/99 WASILLA - There was a moment of silence when it came time to introduce musher No. 15 at Sunday's official start of the 27th Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. No team of yipping dogs held in check by straining handlers. No biography read over the loudspeaker to the mob of fans. Just quiet. And quite a bit of empty space between musher No. 14 and musher No. 16.
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3/8/99 Some of the biggest personalities on the Iditarod trail this year may not be Martin Buser, DeeDee Jonrowe or Jeff King but Shut up, Rascal and Wolf Man. As many mushers will tell you, each dog has its habits, quirks, and "issues." You don't have to be Sigmund Freud to race the Iditarod, but a bit of doggy psychology to cajole and calm your team doesn't hurt.
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3/7/99 Joe Redington Sr. isn't ready to run the Iditarod again. Not yet. But he figures he's got time to build a good dog team and have himself trail ready by March 4, 2000. He'll be 83. "I'm gettin' stronger," he said Saturday as he walked on the sugary snow of Fourth Avenue just before the start of the 27th Iditarod.
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3/7/99 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.
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3/7/99 As a group, Iditarod mushers may be the oldest elite athletes in the world. In any other sport, unless you are George Foreman, Nolan Ryan or George Blanda, having 45 candles on your cake means you are probably shopping for a rocking chair. Not in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. If you are 45 and standing on the back of sled runners, you might well be shopping for a victory cigar.
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3/7/99
A dozen California teenagers watched as Barb Redington plunged her arms into a large Rubbermaid tub full of chopped meat, canola oil, water and soggy kibble. The meat had passed its sell-by date, she said, but still was safe for dogs. That accounted for the smell, which was ripe and just this side of unpleasant. Raking her hands through the chunky, glistening gruel, Redington described the kind of stool - color and consistency - that a well-nourished dog produces.
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3/6/99 John Barron is one of the gray eminences of the Iditarod. And not just metaphorically because of his longevity. He's got gray hair and a gray mustache. So gray it's going on white. If he were a civil servant, he'd be eligible for his 20-year pension this season. At 50, Barron has been racing the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race since 1979. He is a perennial, a musher to watch for, a musher who is steady, who shows in the money and makes some noise. But he is just shy of that group of front-runners to be feared, whose names are mentioned in different tones.
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3/6/99 Familiar face or a new one? Repeat champion or changing of the guard? That is the core question as the 1999 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race begins at 10 this morning in Anchorage with a ceremonial start. The real racing starts at 11 a.m. Sunday in Wasilla.
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3/5/99 INDIAN - Usually, D'Antoine Webb loves to talk. But at the first sight of "his" sled dogs, the Baltimore teen seemed to enter a trance. Just last month, the teen won a citywide essay contest designed to promote the programs of Baltimore's Police Athletic League and motivate its participants - inner-city youths who benefit from the organization's 27 after-school programs serving 7,000 children.
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3/5/99 From show dogs to snow dogs. Last month the USA Network aired the Westminster Dog Show, the annual showcase of pampered pooches and high-maintenance hounds. Now the cable network is turning its attention to macho dogs. USA Network (cable Channel 6) will provide national television coverage of this year's Iditarod, although no one will see it until long after the race is over. The network will air a two-hour, prime time documentary on April 6.
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3/5/99 It wasn't a rock concert or a pivotal Anchorage Aces hockey game. Rather, the annual mushers banquet filled the parking lot at Sullivan Arena with cars Thursday night. Inside, a crowd of 1,500 Iditarod fans and sponsors crowded onto the floor to mingle with their favorite competitors.
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3/5/99 Daily News sports editor Why do I feel like I'm playing darts here? Why do I feel like I am about to close my eyes and fling? Perhaps because the competition to win the 27th annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is better than ever. Perhaps because no matter how many people you talk to, no matter how many horoscopes you read, no matter how analytical you get, the only way to handicap the top 20 finishers in order in the Iditarod is gut instinct.
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3/5/99 Anchorage may be the only city in America that puts snow ON the streets each winter. Since you can't run dog sleds on asphalt, a little redecorating is needed for the ceremonial start of the Iditarod. "(They're) hauling in something like 80,000 square yards of snow," said Rick Calcote, coordinator of the 10 a.m. Saturday race start.
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3/4/99 Mushers take heed. The Iditarod Trail between Finger Lake and Rainy Pass is a mess. Or, as race manager Jack Niggemyer said Wednesday, it's "one big mogul." Rutted and wind-scoured, bumpy and rough, the 30-mile stretch of trail for the 27th annual race across the state that begins Saturday in Anchorage is going to jar mushers' backs and might produce minor dog injuries if drivers aren't careful, according to race officials.
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3/3/99 Turns out Monopoly money is real. Mushers in this year's Iditarod will be racing for a record purse when they line up for Saturday's ceremonial start on Fourth Avenue, thanks to annual revenues that were better than projected, including a $30,000 boost from the sales of Iditarod Monopoly games.
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2/15/99 FAIRBANKS - Sepp Herrmann finds himself at a spiritual crossroads. He hopes a 1,000-mile trek behind a dog team can provide insight. A November encounter with a grizzly bear decimated the German musher's dog team. It was his confidence in that team that lured him into this year's Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race.
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2/13/99 Longtime sled dog racers Susan Butcher and DeeDee Jonrowe wanted to avoid the spotlight when they entered the Fur Rendezvous Women's World Championship. They came here for no other reason than to race dogs and hoped to blend in with the other 10 race rookies.
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1/27/99 Thoroughly tested by violent Southwest Alaska weather, a frosty Doug Swingley pulled into Bethel early Tuesday morning behind a happy dog team to win the 20th anniversary Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race. "They started off wanting to be the toughest race," the Montanan and former Iditarod champ said by phone as he thawed out later, "and they ended up being it."
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1/22/99 Nervous officials with the $100,000 Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race were looking west Thursday night and wondering what Mother Nature might throw at them this year. A large low-pressure system moving out of the North Pacific Ocean toward the Kuskokwim River Delta had the Bethel-based middle-distance competition contemplating one "hellacious weather report," race spokeswoman Bev Hoffman said.
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1/17/99 On rolling hills outside Baltimore, where the average winter temperature hovers near 40 degrees and snow is cause for a citywide shutdown, Dan Dent is doing his best to train for 1,100 miles of Alaska wilderness. As he rides his 21-speed mountain bike along paved roads, he envisions himself 3,000 miles away on the Iditarod trail.
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12/25/98 BETHEL - Jeff King, reigning champion in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, heads a field of 10 mushers signed up for the 1999 Kuskokwim 300. For King, it would be the 10th time he has run the Kusko, which he has won a record four times. Race officials said Friday that former Iditarod champion Rick Mackey and 1998 third-place finisher Charlie Boulding are also registered for the Kusko, which starts Jan. 22 in Bethel.
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6/28/98 Big Lake musher Lynda Plettner has grabbed an early lead in the 1999 Iditarod. Plettner won a drawing Saturday that awarded her the use of a new Chrysler Dodge truck for the winter. Plettner, who finished 33rd in this year's race, gets the truck from Oct. 1 until March 31.
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6/7/98 First came the haughty girls of Cosmopolitan magazine, sashaying into Anchorage on the hunt for a beard-scratching, crotch-itching, bear-smelling, real Alaska man. Now come the buff boys of Outside magazine, charging toward the Great White Silence on a mission of their own: to go where no mountain biker has gone.
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1/9/63 Two-time defending champ Mitch Seavey won't defend his title at this year's Copper Basin 300 Sled Dog Race, but several top-flight mushers will brave bone-chilling cold in an effort to win one of the state's premier preIditarod contests. Among the 40 mushers expected at the starting line in Glennallen today are perennial Iditarod contenders DeeDee Jonrowe and Charlie Boulding, as well as former Copper Basin winners John Schandelmeier and Will Forsberg. |