Alaska News

Champs feel strain of snowmachine racing

When defending Tesoro Iron Dog champions Marc McKenna of Anchorage and Eric Quam of Eagle River zoom off Big Lake on Sunday morning at the start of the world's longest and toughest snowmachine race, both will be aiming for a repeat victory.

Just not together.

McKenna, 34, has traded both partners and machines, hooking up with three-time champion Dusty Van Meter and riding a Ski-Doo instead of the Arctic Cat that delivered him to the finish line first last year.

Quam, 38, is still on his Arctic Cat, but he's teamed with rookie Bradley Helwig this year.

In a 2,000-mile race that always results in broken metal and usually in broken bones, broken partnerships are inevitable too.

"Occasionally, (racers) get out there on the trail and find out they don't get along," said Iron Dog treasurer Jim Wilke, a former racer. "If things don't go well, occasionally there's a bit of finger pointing and muttering going on. It's a team sport, but just by the nature of it you can sit there for hours thinking about what that other idiot just did. That's a lot of time to stew.

"I know, for example, one team member who crashed and the other guy was so disgusted he wouldn't even talk to him."

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McKenna and Quam aren't alone in dancing with new partners.

Nine veterans of last year's Iron Dog are back with different teammates. Only six teams from last year return intact, including the second-place duo of Dwayne Drake from Fairbanks and Andy George from Wasilla, who have been together since 2005. Scott Davis, who is tied with John Faeo for most wins in race history with seven, has ridden with Todd Palin, the governor's husband, since 2002.

Long-term Iron Dog partnerships like that are rare -- but few racers switch both partners and machines as frequently as McKenna.

Since his rookie year of 1999, McKenna, a two-time champion, has teamed with six different partners -- Skeeter Creighton, Mark Torkelson, Tyler Aklestad, Nick Olstad, Quam and Van Meter -- on the machines of all four major manufacturers.

"He's wound pretty tight, he's pretty aggressive," Wilke said of McKenna. "You have to calm him down. He tears stuff up, and that can be tough on partnerships."

The now-retired Faeo, who will fly the course in support of Polaris racers Todd Minnick and Nick Olstad, agreed.

"Marc is one of those firecrackers," Faeo said. "Eric is definitely a good partner. I can't believe Marc let him slip away."

Still, Faeo knows changing partners is a fact of life for all top racers.

"I probably had five over the 25 years I did it," he said. "Sometimes a guy just feels like the partner doesn't chip in enough. I know there were times I felt like I was doing most of the work, and that gets old.

"During the race and for months beforehand, you see a lot of your partner. You see the inside of the person, and you've got to feel comfortable with that."

But perhaps the biggest reason that McKenna has a new partner and a new machine is that he was recruited hard by Team CC, which runs power sports dealerships in Eagle River and Wasilla and sponsors a group of riders on Ski-Doos who are trying to break the stranglehold Arctic Cat has on the Iron Dog.

Arctic Cat drivers have won four consecutive Iron Dogs, five of the last six and nine of the last 11.

That's enough, says Korey Cronquist, the 38-year-old Team CC general manager who started 10 Iron Dogs and finished two in a race career that included dozens of other victories.

Team CC team aggressively pursued McKenna.

"They made me an offer I didn't think I could turn down," he said. "Cats are pretty darn reliable. But the Ski Doos are lighter, and it's proven to be a good rig."

In addition to the McKenna-Van Meter pairing, Team CC also sponsors the team of Tyler Aklestad and Tyson Johnson. Runners-up in 2007, Johnson and Aklestad scratched in Tanana last year.

"I think we're pretty evenly matched," said McKenna, who plans to lead during the early portion of the race on trail he has more experience riding. "I've always had good partners."

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Just not the same one for very long.

"This race is pretty brutal on you," Van Meter said. "If you prepare correctly, then you've got to hope for some luck along the way.

"Unfortunately, I've had some bad luck."

Last year, a busted voltage regulator cost Van Meter and teammate Jimmer Dick of Seward more than 10 hours while they waited for the replacement part. They finished 11th.

Since winning in 2004 with Mark Carr, Van Meter has not finished higher than seventh and has scratched twice.

"Three years in a row something has gone wrong. But you never know," Van Meter said. "I went many years without any problems."

Reporter Mike Campbell can be reached at mcampbell@adn.com or 257-4329.

By MIKE CAMPBELL

mcampbell@adn.com

Mike Campbell

Mike Campbell was a longtime editor for Alaska Dispatch News, and before that, the Anchorage Daily News.

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