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| 28th
year of Alaska's great race
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| 01/12/00 GEBHARDT DECLARED WINNER OF COPPER BASIN 300 By Craig Medred Daily News Outdoors Editor After a night of debate and a day of contemplation by race officials, Paul Gebhardt of Kasilof on Tuesday was crowned the winner of the Copper Basin 300 Sled Dog Race. He was the first musher to cross the finish line outside the Gakona Lodge and Trading Post Monday evening, but five more mushers followed within 22 minutes. With the dog teams parked, the jockeying began. Almost everyone was in trouble for doing something wrong, race marshal Jon Van Zyle said Tuesday. ''There were rule infractions,'' he said, ''little ones, big ones, medium ones.'' Much of it had to do with litter -- dog booties, dog dishes and other gear -- left in checkpoints or along the trail. ''There was an awful lot of litter left on the trail,'' Van Zyle said. But there were other rule violations, too. An exhausted-sounding Van Zyle, speaking from Gakona by telephone Tuesday night, said there was an awful lot of sorting out to be done, and none of it was simple. Some rule infractions could have been debated for a long time even if all the facts were clear, and in this case, Van Zyle said, the facts were sometimes a little foggy. ''This person said this, that person said that,'' Van Zyle said.' By late Monday night, Van Zyle confessed, he was ready to alter the order of the finishers. There were reports that Hans Gatt of Atlin, British Columbia, might be named the winner with Gebhardt moving down and second-place finisher Jessie Royer from Fairbanks possibly dropping as far as fourth or fifth. Then, Van Zyle had a change of heart. At 10 a.m. Tuesday, he said, came the realization ''it's a dog race.'' Given that, Van Zyle said, the dogs that reach the finish line first deserved to be recognized. The mushers, meanwhile, can be punished in other ways. ''There are going to be other kinds of penalties levied,'' Van Zyle said, a polite way of saying the distribution of the Copper Basin's $25,000 purse is being altered. What the race is doing is fining mushers judged guilty of rule violations. Van Zyle wouldn't go into the details Tuesday. Everyone, he said, had agreed not to talk about the issue publicly until after the finisher's banquet, where the mushers were to officially learn of the race results. All of this might look a little bizarre, Van Zyle said, but what the race was trying to do was ''uphold the sanctity of the rules without penalizing the performance of the dogs and the dog teams themselves.'' That decision gave Gebhardt his first significant distance-racing win and marked him as a serious Iditarod contender this year. Although the 43-year-old Kenai Peninsula carpenter didn't start running dogs until he moved north from Minnesota 11 years ago, he has shown an affinity for the sport. An also-ran in his first two Iditarods, he raced to a 13th-place finish in 1998 and proved that was no accident by finishing sixth last year. This Copper Basin race showed he has what it takes to win -- even if the trophy was a little tarnished. But that's nothing new in Alaska sled-dog racing. Races here have a rich tradition of ending up somewhat confused at the finish. The Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race from Bethel to Aniak and back once disqualified the first-place finisher for taking the wrong trail into Bethel, even though everyone involved agreed that no advantage had been gained. Another time, the Kusko witheld $1,000 from legendary Alaska musher George Attla's second-place prize money because he boycotted the race finishers' banquet after a near fistfight with race winner and hometown favorite Myron Angstman. Attla said Angstman illegally used a noisemaker to distract Attla's team on the way to the finish line. Angstman denied it. Attla went home mad and never raced in Bethel again. The Copper Basin has had rule problems before, too. Last year race winner Martin Buser of Big Lake was penalized for leaving a litter of dog dishes and booties in the second-to-last checkpoint. And second-place finisher Linwood Fiedler of Willow was penalized for failing to wear a bib into a checkpoint. Neither Buser's 30-minute time penalty nor Fiedler's 15-minute time penalty affected the standings for the race. Similar penalties this year could have caused havoc. Never before had the Copper Basin finished with the leaders in such a knot. Gebhardt beat Royer -- a 23-year-old transplanted Montanan who lives in Susan Butcher's old cabin at Eureka and trains with Cim Smyth of Big Lake -- by only five minutes. Royer beat Gatt -- a two-time winner of Wyoming's International Rocky Mountain Stage Stop Sled Dog Race -- by only 10 minutes. Gatt was a scant two minutes in front of Kasilof's Jon Little, another up-and-coming Iditarod racer from the Kenai. And Little bested Thomas Tetz -- a training buddy of Gatt's -- by five minutes. Tetz is a resident of Carcross, Yukon Territory, who has raced canoes as a paddler with Gatt. Outdoors editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com. The finishers in Gakona on Monday: 1) Gebhardt; 6:08 p.m.; 2) Royer; 6:13 p.m.; 3) Gatt, 6:23 p.m.; 4) Little, 6:25 p.m.; 5) Tetz, 6:30 p.m.; 6) John Barron of Willow, 7:26 p.m.; 7) DeeDee Jonrowe of Willow, 8 p.m.; 8) Cim Smyth of Fairbanks, 10:15 p.m.; 9) Doug Grilliot of Willow, 10:44 p.m.; 10) Brian MacDougall of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, 10:45 p.m.; 11) Sonny King of Spartanburg, S.C., 11:24 p.m.; 12) Tony Willis of Anchorage, 11:50 p.m. The finishers in Gakona on Tuesday: 13) Andy Willis of Willow, 1 a.m.; 14) James Wheeler of Kasilof, 1:15 a.m.; 15) Tim Robb of Fairbanks, 4:14 p.m.; 16) Anna Bondarenko of Chugiak, 6:03 a.m.; 17) David Milne of Two Rivers, 6:08 a.m.; 18) Tony Blanford of Fairbanks, 9:20 a.m.; 19) Christian Clerc of Washington state, 9:31 a.m.; 20) Dan Dent of Baltimore, 10:19 a.m.; 21) John Bramate of Kasilof, 1:25 p.m.; 22) Gus Guenther of Clam Gulch, 1:41 p.m.; 23) Larry Carroll of Willow, 2:44 p.m.; 24) Michael King of Salcha, 3:22 p.m.; 25) Bob Hempstead, 3:31 p.m.; 26) Rick Wilson of Copper Center, 5:02 p.m.; 27) Kevin Kortuem, Spartanburg, N.C.; 28) Andrew Lesh of Fairbanks, 5:41 p.m. |
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Anchorage Daily News