With many of his closest competitors falling farther behind, defending champion Doug Swingley launched a swift team of 12 huskies toward the Bering Sea coast on Saturday night, leading what could become the fastest Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race ever. The 46-year-old, two-time winner began the 90-mile drive through the mountains to the coastal town of Unalakleet at 6:07 p.m. after resting his dogs more than five hours in the Yukon River's cold afternoon sun. He was more than an hour ahead of record pace - a record he set in 1995 with a 9 day, 2 hour, 42 minute run to Nome. If Swingley can match his pace of last year, he'll reach Unalakleet about 4:30 a.m. today. Trailing by nearly five hours, Manley musher Charlie Boulding wheeled into the final river checkpoint of Kaltag with eight dogs only 14 minutes before Swingley pulled out. Boulding was only 43 minutes behind Swingley in Ruby, three checkpoints back, but had been losing time to extra rests and slower runs. He left Kaltag at 9:49 p.m., more than 31/2 hours behind Swingley. "We'll be hanging in there," Boulding said. If this is not Boulding's race, he said, "there's always another year." Where Swingley's fit dogs had spent exactly 20 hours to travel the 146 miles down the wide, flat Yukon River, Boulding took 23 hours and 36 minutes. Other top mushers appeared to be slowing down as the musher from Montana speeded up. Kasilof musher Paul Gebhardt, the 2000 Copper Basin 300 champ on his fifth Iditarod, proved the point. Gebhardt had been traveling faster than Swingley earlier on the river but dropped three dogs in Galena, reducing his team to 10. Some 52 miles later at Nulato, Gebhardt still held a 23-minute lead on Swingley. But Gebhardt halted on the river for a long rest, then passed through Kaltag just before 8 p.m. with 10 dogs. In second place, he trailed the leader by 104 minutes. As Swingley made his drive for the coast, an onslaught of former champions and top mushers were chasing downriver. Ramy Brooks, the 1999 Yukon Quest champ, drove out of Nulato at about 5 p.m. In the hour before 7 p.m., another five hit the trail, too - three-time champ Jeff King, Seward musher Mitch Seavey, three-time champ Martin Buser, five-time champ Rick Swenson and 1983 champ Rick Mackey. "All the contenders played their cards well and according to their plans," wrote expert musher Tim White, a veteran Iditarod racer and former Alpirod champ who's filing commentary to the Internet. "But so far, Swingley has a better hand with one or maybe two trump cards - speed and possibly a breakthrough strategy, training for 100-mile nonstop runs." Despite Swingley's lead, the teams in this top group still looked strong, reported 1989 champ Joe Runyan in a dispatch filed to the Internet. "I wish my traveling speed was faster, but the dogs are strong, and I still have 12 dogs," Brooks told Runyan in Nulato. Later he dropped one. Mackey said while Swingley's team was strong, it is not as dominant as it was last year, when it powered away from the field and won by more than eight hours. "He's just got another dog team, like the rest of us," he told KNOM radio. "They seem to be making good time, but maybe he's taking a lot out of them. He's trying hard to win." King said the contenders would be sorted out from the pretenders by the time the race reached the coast. "We'll find out on the (Yukon) river who's really going to be in this race or not," he said before leaving Ruby. "Historically, the first team to Unalakleet wins the Iditarod." That's particularly true in years of good weather, and this is shaping up as one of those years. The National Weather Service is forecasting daytime highs into the 20s and lows in the teens, with only a slight chance of snow. Both Unalakleet and Golovin, checkpoints along the final 220 miles, have seen winds of 40 mph the last few days. But the gusts are coming out of the east, a tailwind that could even help mushers. Forecasters expect it to abate over the next two days. * Mary Pemberton of the Associated Press contributed to this story
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