Iditarod champion Doug Swingley mushes past the crowd on Nome's Front street to complete his record-setting race Tuesday morning. (JIM LAVRAKAS/Anchorage Daily News)

Third time's a record
Swingley fastest ever to capture Iditarod crown

By DOUG O’HARRA
Daily News reporter

In a stunning demonstration of speed, careful planning and "magnificent dogs," Montana musher Doug Swingley seized his third championship of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race Tuesday morning, knocking almost two hours off the record he set five years ago.

Driving his remaining 11 dogs through 20-something temperatures and mild conditions, the race’s defending champion pulled under the burled arch on Nome’s Front Street before hundreds of cheering, hooting fans at 10:58 a.m. Alaska Standard Time – after spending exactly nine days, 58 minutes and 6 seconds on the 1,100-mile trail from Anchorage.

With an average speed of 5:02 mph across mountain ranges, sea ice and wind-scoured taiga, Swingley broke the record he set in 1995 by 106 minutes.

"It’s the same magnificent dog team that I had last year," Swingley said.

Swingley’s closest competitor, Kasilof musher Paul Gebhardt, arrived in Nome at 4:04 p.m., more than 5 hours after Swingley. Finishing with 10 dogs, Gebhardt's trip took 9 days, 6 hours, 4 minutes and 23 seconds. He earned $52,500.

Another pack of top mushers, including three-time champ Jeff King and top contender Ramy Brooks, have completed their 8-hour rest at White Mountain and should cross the finish line tonight.

For a race that can feature below-zero chill factors and savage blizzards, the 2000 Iditarod had caressed Swingley’s record-setting journey with balmy, spring-like weather.

"It was hot the whole way," he said when he stepped from the sled runners in Nome. "We weren’t prepared for these temperatures. I should have worn sweatpants and tennis shoes."

But Swingley, who had expressed supreme confidence in his dogs and abilities before the race began, had said his actual plan had been to arrive hours earlier and shatter the race’s nine-day mark.

"The record was not important – I already had the record," he said. But "if I could get an eight-day race – that would have been a milestone in Iditarod history."

The 46-year-old dog driver from Lincoln, Mont., for the second-consecutive year the oldest champion in race history, dominated since he reached the halfway camp near Cripple nearly a week earlier. Though Gebhardt had led the race through the Alaska Range, and a few other top mushers occasionally leapfrogged ahead, Swingley’s swift dogs and clockwork schedule overshadowed the field as thoroughly as the sunny weather and hard trail.

"They started a little tentative, and I was a little tentative with them," he said. "But they kept getting stronger and stronger."

After an eight-hour rest in the Yukon River village of Ruby, Swingley drove down river toward Galena at more than 10 mph, nearly an hour faster than most of his competitors, positioning himself a full rest stop ahead of other teams.

For the next 450 miles – down the river, over a mountain range to the ocean, along the Bering Sea Coast – Swingley effectively maintained a four-to-five hour lead, often leaving checkpoints before other teams arrived.

Swingley said he’d been training his dogs with 150-mile runs, giving them the ability to race more than 100 miles without a long rest.

"The secret of my dog team is their resilience, and I just used that to my advantage," he said in Nome.

"I had that much confidence in my team that I didn’t even question letting them go (on the Yukon River)," he added. "It was an awesome run to Galena."

Swingley’s performance as a dog trainer and driver earned him at least $106,915 in prizes, including the $60,000 check for winning and a $37,915 Dodge Ram Cummins Turbo Diesel four-wheel-drive pickup truck, the third vehicle he’s picked up for winning.

The only non-Alaskan to ever win the annual Anchorage-to-Nome race, Swingley now joins an elite group of multiple winners – five-time champ Rick Swenson, four-time champ Susan Butcher, and three-time champs Jeff King and Martin Buser. Along with King and Buser, Swingley has dominated the race for the past decade.

Yet Swingley’s accomplishments go even deeper. His worst finish in nine races was ninth on his first race, which earned him Rookie of the Year award.

Swingley is the first person to take back-to-back wins since Susan Butcher won three in a row in the late 1980s.

"It hadn’t been done for a long time, so it gave me motivation," he said. "With the competition that’s out there today, it’s really difficult."

So far, Swingley is the only competitor to seize the Iditarod’s major awards every time he’s won – first to halfway, first to the Yukon River, first to the Bering Sea Coast.

Asked for his secret by a TV interviewer, Swingley replied: "I think that we just go all out – total commitment. Nobody in my family does anything halfway."

Daily News staff writer Doug O’Harra has covered the Iditarod four times. He can be reached at do'harra@adn.com.

Doug Swingley mushes past the crowd on Nome's Front street Tuesday morning to win his second consecutive Iditarod, bringing his total wins to three. He is also the only musher from outside Alaska to win the race. (JIM LAVRAKAS/Anchorage Daily News)