Defending champion Doug Swingley, looking leaner and fitter than ever, pulled away from downtown Anchorage and headed to Nome on Saturday behind a dog team he said is the best he's ever been part of. That's right. Swingley, the two-time winner from Montana who is the only Outside musher to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, views himself as part of the gang, if not the gangline. And in order to deserve his spot in the lineup, he spent much of the past year whipping himself into shape. "I'm just trying to stay in tremendous shape because I consider myself No. 17 on my team," Swingley said. "I might look leaner, but I'm just in better shape." At Saturday's ceremonial start, Swingley, 46, defined coolness. He drank coffee, chatted with spectators and gave a few autographs as he leisurely waited to move his team to the Fourth Avenue starting line. While other mushers had their dogs out of their trucks and bootied hours before the race started, Swingley kept his dogs in the truck until 40 minutes before their start time. Wearing a ballcap, dark glasses and a fur-collared parka, Swingley looked part swashbuckler, part NASCAR driver and unarguably athletic. "This is a very athletic endeavor," he said. "I broke some ribs last year, and I wonder if it would have happened if I'd been in better shape." In 1995, Swingley recorded the fastest time in Iditarod history, and last year, he became the oldest person to win the 1,100-mile race. Last year's victory was despite a crash that left him with two broken ribs and a torn pectoral muscle about a mile out of Wasilla, more than 1,000 miles from the finish line in Nome. He took a spill while whipping around a corner on a nasty section of trail, and when he landed, his battery pack slammed into his chest. The injury made Swingley's journey as problematic as it was painful, and it was plenty painful. "I took a lot of painkillers," he said. "Aleve should've been one of my sponsors." Swingley couldn't easily lift, feed or water his dogs. He felt like he wasn't pulling his weight as a team member, that the dogs deserved more from him. Hence the decision to build his strength and fitness for this season - a task he couldn't begin until three months after last year's race because it took him that long to heal. But while the race was still on, Swingley was determined not to let the crash and its consequences force him to quit. "I'm not gonna stop because of a couple of cracked ribs," he said. That Swingley had the toughness and resolve needed to stay in the race, much less win it, is the stuff of Alaska legend. It's the kind of attitude relished and often displayed by Alaskans: Just wrap some duct tape around your ribcage and keep going. That Swingley is from the Lower 48 will likely ensure his gritty victory doesn't become part of Alaska legend. As Swingley was introduced Saturday to the mob of spectators lining Fourth Avenue, one or two half-hearted boos accompanied the applause. Twice he has claimed Alaska's crown jewel, and twice he came from Outside to do it. Swingley, who lives on a ranch in Lincoln, Mont., calls the anti-Outside sentiment "a nonissue." He offers no apology for crashing the Alaska-dominated party, nor does he intend to move his kennel north. He's a fifth-generation Montanan and proud of it. "My roots are buried in Montana," he said. "I have no ambitions to live in Alaska." His girlfriend, Melanie Shirilla, said it's little wonder Swingley is content where he is. "We have blue skies and clear sunny days where you can see clear across the state," she said. "Mentally, I think that's an advantage. We never have to fight the winter blues, those doldrums." Swingley likes the comparatively mild climate, the training conditions, and the ability to "be close to the real world, to modern amenities." Another benefit to living Outside is you are truly an outsider. Between last year's Iditarod and this year's, Swingley came to Alaska once, for a fishing trip in summer, which coincided with a race sponsorship banquet. The only mushers who have seen Swingley's team this year are those who joined him at the Grand Portage Passage race in Minnesota in late January. "I'm out of the loop. They don't see my team every day of the year. Rumors are swirling out there, and any of them about me are totally untrue because they don't even know where I live," said Swingley, who won in Minnesota by racing past Seward's Mitch Seavey in the final 60 miles. If anyone has questioned the strength of Swingley's dog team, Swingley has answered them repeatedly and definitively in the week leading up to Saturday's start. He's driving the best he's ever had, he said. The dogs look unbeatable, he said. He all but guaranteed victory at Thursday's musher banquet and was equally confident before leaving downtown Saturday. "I'm just going to get to Nome quicker than the rest of them," he said. q Executive sports editor Beth Bragg can be reached at bbragg@adn.com.
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