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| 28th
year of Alaska's great race
|
| 01/08/00 FLU FOILS BEST LAID COPPER BASIN PLANS By Craig Medred Daily News Outdoors Editor The flu bug on Friday significantly altered the looks of the Copper Basin 300 Sled Dog Race scheduled to start today in Gakona. Defending champ Martin Buser, who has run Copper Basin since its inception in 1990, will be home in bed at Big Lake when the first of 37 mushers head west at 1 p.m. on the first leg of the race. Buser won the race last year for the first time, after a string of second-place finishes that were broken only by the year the race was canceled due to temperatures of 60 degrees below zero. The weather appears to be more cooperative this year, Barb Strang at the Gakona Lodge and Trading Post said Friday. A cold spell that had settled a subzero chill over the Nelchina Basin for most of the week is easing. Air temperatures crept above zero Friday, a welcome change for volunteers at checkpoints in Glennallen, Tolsona Lake, Lake Louise, Sourdough, Meiers Lake, Summit Lake and Chistochina. Body temperatures were another matter. And not just for Buser. Last year's second-place finisher, Iditarod-veteran Linwood Fiedler of Willow, also was a last-minute dropout due to the flu. ''I'm on the couch right now,'' he said Friday evening. ''I got so weak I could hardly do anything. ''We had a good team, and we were all set to go,'' Fiedler added. ''I felt shaky last night (Thursday), so I went to bed early. When I got up this morning, it was worse.'' Buser reported much the same experience. He had everything packed and ready to go when he fell ill. ''I think I might have got it in Louisiana,'' he added, noting that he went there for a family gathering at Christmas only to come home and get reports on how everyone in the family was coming down with the flu. The loss of Buser, Fiedler and last year's third-place finisher -- Dave Sawatzky of Healy -- left the Copper Basin field wide open. Sawatzky was among Interior mushers set back by an early season shortage of snow that made it difficult for his dogs to get the necessary training miles. The absence of those three left the top finisher from last year's Copper Basin field the No. 4 finisher -- Jon Little, a Daily News reporter from the Kenai Peninsula. Buser expected Little to be pushed hard by better-known veterans of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race -- DeeDee Jonrowe and John Barron of Willow, along with Paul Gephardt of Kasilof -- and a pair of Canadians -- Hans Gatt of Atlin, British Columbia, and Brian MacDougall of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. 'Brian might win this race,'' Buser said. A regular winner of the Percy DeWolfe Memorial Mail Race in Whitehorse, a veteran of the Yukon Quest International and the Kuskokwim 300 sled dog races, MacDougall last ran the Copper Basin in 1995. He finished fourth in an extremely strong field. He was about 20 minutes behind three-time Iditarod champ Buser, who was second that year to three-time Iditarod champ Jeff King of Denali Park. And behind MacDougall in '95 was a sled load of very good Iditarod veterans -- Tim Osmar from Clam Gulch, Vern Halter from Willow, Sawatzky and Gephardt. Gatt's resume might be even better, however. A native of Austria, he started running dogs in 1988 and moved to Canada in 1990 to make that his life's work. He has run the Iditarod and the Quest and twice won the 450-mile International Rocky Mountain Stage Stop Sled Dog Race in Wyoming. He finished second there last year to Jeff King. King is among the interesting mix of top Alaska distance mushers not running the Copper Basin this year. He's saving his dogs instead for the Kusko 300 on Jan. 21 in Bethel. Meanwhile, the $100,000 Grand Portage Passage Sled Dog Race, a 300-miler being put on by a Minnesota casino on Jan. 23, is drawing off some of the rest of the best distance-mushers. Two-time and defending Iditarod champ Doug Swingley from Montana is headed there along with Seward's Mitch Seavey, a two-time winner of the Copper Basin; former Iditarod champ Dean Osmar from Clam Gulch; and regular Iditarod contender Bill Cotter from Nenana. |
©2000
Anchorage Daily News