Rick Mackey won the Iditarod in 1983 but now has become one of the race's elder statesmen. At 46, he's the same age his father, Dick, was in 1978 when he won the closest Iditarod in history. "Older guys can stay awake better," says Mackey, "but those young guys run up the hills."

Can wisdom of aged prevail again?

1,100-mile race goes to the swift, and years of experience helps

By LEW FREEDMAN AND CRAIG MEDRED
Anchorage Daily News reporters

As a group, Iditarod mushers may be the oldest elite athletes in the world.

In most sports, 45 candles on the cake mean you’re probably shopping for a rocking chair. Sure, there are exceptions: George Foreman in boxing, Nolan Ryan in baseball, George Blanda in football.

But those are the exceptions.

In most sports, athletes are on the downhill slide by the time they reach 40, and by 45 it’s over.

Not in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

In this sport, a 40-year-old musher can still qualify as an up and comer. Two-time and defending champ Doug Swingley of Montana, who became the oldest winner last year, thinks a musher who stays in shape can still be in the running for the crown at 50.

After that, he said, age might become a handicap on the tiresome trail.

But no one over 45 has won the race yet. That’s how old Swingley was last year, as was Dick Mackey when he won the 1978 Iditarod,.

For 21 years, Mackey’s age stood as a record, but now it’s looking more like it might become the median age for winners.

Most of today’s top contenders are in their 40s.

Swingley is 46. Jeff King of Denali Park, the 1998 winner and seventh-place finisher last year, is 44. Three-time champ Martin Buser of Big Lake, the runner-up last year, is 41.

DeeDee Jonrowe of Willow, the 1998 runner-up and the leading woman in the competition, is 46. So is former Iditarod and Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race champ Rick Mackey of Nenana, the 16th-place finisher last year.

Five-time Iditarod champion Rick Swenson of Two Rivers, fourth last year, is 49. But age hasn’t diminished his fires. Swenson has been training even more seriously than normal in the belief he can become the only Iditarod musher to win races in four decades – the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and 2000.

He’s not exactly competing against the Pepsi generation, either.

Consider the fresh-faced up and comers, the people some think of as the ‘‘young guns:’’

• Vern Halter of Willow, third last year, is 51.

• Paul Gebhardt of Kasilof, sixth last year, is 43.

• Mitch Seavey of Seward, 11th last year, is 41.

• John Baker of Kotzebue, ninth last year, is almost a kid at 37.

• And Charlie Boulding of Manley, third two years ago, just won the Kuskokwim 300 at age 58.

Among the top competitors, only Ramey Smyth of Big Lake, 12th last year, qualifies as a real youngster. He’s 24, the youngest competitor to finish in the top 20 in 1999.

The only other top-20 finisher under 30 was Christoper Knott of Two Rivers. He’s 29 this year, which makes him three years younger than Clam Gulch’s Tim Osmar, who at 32 seems like he’s been around forever.

Osmar started racing the Iditarod when he was 18. A 14-year veteran, Osmar is a kid compared to the likes of the oldest front-runners: Bill Cotter of Nenana, 54, and Boulding.

But nobody is challenging the late Joe Redington, who finished fifth at the age of 71 in 1988. That’s old even among Iditarod competitors. Among top-20 finishers last year, the median age was a comparatively youthful 42.5 years.

Still, there are few other sports in which you would expect to find an average age that high among the top competitors. And although these mushers are old by athletic standards, there’s no evidence to suggest anyone is about to flame out.

‘‘I don’t think we’ll all just keel over,’’ Jonrowe said.

‘‘The guys who are there have taken good care of themselves,’’ she said. ‘‘You don’t see just any 50-year-old up there. You see the exceptional 50-year-old.’’

Iditarod founder Redington of Knik was, after all, 57 when he ran his first Iditarod in 1974. He maintained a string of top-10 finishes in his 50s, 60s and 70s.

But he never won, which raises an interesting question.

Were the victories of Swingley and Mackey unique triumphs over middle age, or are we about to see the age barrier shredded?

Can Swenson, who was a skinny young man of 24 when he won his first race in 1977, really win again as a heftier old man of 49?

Maybe.

Jonrowe makes getting older sound like an advantage.

‘‘The Iditarod is a chess game with a dog team,’’ she said. ‘‘The strategy involves wisdom.’’ Meaning experience.

Several top Iditarod mushers have used that experience to achieve at a high level for 20 years.

Of course, the Iditarod is a dog race, not a human-powered race. But the musher matters. Dog drivers can save time with checkpoint efficiency, a sharp game plan and resting and feeding the dogs at the right times.

The musher also can be a drag on a good team. Illness can strike. A wrong turn can be taken. Time can be wasted in checkpoints. Bad decisions can be costly.

‘‘Older guys can stay awake better,’’ said Rick Mackey, who is now 46, the same age his father, Dick, was in 1978 when he won the closest Iditarod ever. ‘‘But those young guys run up the hills.’’

The 46-year-old Dick Mackey couldn’t beat a then 27-year-old Swenson in a sprint to the finish line in Nome, but Mackey’s dogs did – thus ending the race in a minor controversy that set an Iditarod precedent.

Swenson got his sled across the finish line first. But Mackey was declared the winner because his lead dogs were first across the finish.

The issue of how a race that starts with a sled on the starting line and the dogs far out in front could be decided by the first dog across the finish was never thoroughly debated. Had it been, a case could have been made that the race should have gone to a Swenson for being able to hustle his sled across.

Seventeen years ago, he was lean and tough. It was a small advantage over the older and less fit Mackey. Today it’s different. Swenson is the one suffering at the hands of Father Time.

Doctors and scientists say nothing can be done to halt natural .

Despite those declines, however, mushers’ careers can last a long time. Seavey thinks it’s obvious why.

‘‘In all humility,’’ he said, ‘‘the dogs are the athletes. We ride. I think of us as the silver-haired coach on the sidelines. We’re not running 1,000 miles. They are.’’

Maybe so, but most mushers are as limp as dishrags after the 1,100-mile journey across the state to Nome. They may average less than three hours of sleep a night for nine-plus days. Many work tirelessly behind the sled.

Four-time champ Susan Butcher set the standard for holding onto the handlebar and jogging up every little hill to assist her dog team. Buser has used a pair of ski poles and, occasionally, a homemade sail to help his team move along lengthy stretches on the Bering Sea coast.

It’s a demanding physical chore but probably not the most demanding.

That might involve caring for the dogs’ feet. Mushers go up and down like pogo sticks dozens of times per day as they tend to those feet, putting on new booties, rubbing in ointment, treating cuts or just looking for wear.

After a while, hands ache, arms ache, backs ache, shoulders ache.Age catches up with every athletic competitor some day. The only question is when.

‘‘We just don’t know it yet,’’ said Swingley. ‘‘We’re still big kids.’’

Doug Swingley stands in the doorway of the checker's cabin in Iditarod while he waits for word on getting a sled flown in to the checkpoint. Swingley's victory in last year's Iditarod made him the oldest champion in history. (BOB HALLINEN / Anchorage Daily News)