Sports

Minnick, Olstad speed into Interior with 33-minute lead

Tesoro Iron Dog race leaders Todd Minnick and Nick Olstad from Wasilla were holding a lead of more than a half-hour as the world's longest, toughest snowmachine race rocketed toward the Yukon River this afternoon.

The pair -- Minnick, 29, and Olstad, 26 -- left Nome at 8 a.m. and were out of Unalakleet, about 300 miles south, less than five hours later. That's where the race turns inland toward the frozen Yukon River.

The top racers are expected to take their first mandatory rest stop at the village of Kaltag, the first checkpoint on the Yukon on the race to the Fairbanks finish line.

Chasing the Polaris Dragon sleds of Minnick and Olstad were 23-year-old Tyler Aklestad from Palmer and 29-year-old Tyson Johnson from Eagle River on Ski-Doos.

Although they were fast, they had not cut into the frontrunners' lead. Leaving the village of Shaktoolik, where both the teams stopped for only two minutes to top their gas tanks, Minnick and Olstad held a 33-minute lead. It had been 32 when the racers left Nome this morning.

Another two dozen teams are still competing, but only a handful have a chance of catching the leaders.

The Weather Service warned that a front coming from the west will bring blowing snow and winds up to 30 mph. But the frigid temperatures that sank below minus 40 on the drive to Nome are moderating. Unalakleet was expected to reach 20 degrees Thursday afternoon.

ADVERTISEMENT

Minnick and Olstad left Nome at 8 a.m. Defending champion Marc McKenna and his new partner, three-time winner Dusty Van Meter of Kasilof, were looming in third place, 47 minutes behind the leaders.

The first three teams all include fast, experienced drivers.

Olstad is the only driver in recent race history to win as a rookie, a feat he accomplished in 2005 when McKenna was his partner. But he's been forced to drop out of three straight races because of equipment failures. His partner, Minnick, has also failed to finish four of his last five Iron Dogs.

McKenna, meanwhile, has never finished worse than second -- when he has finished. He, too, has scratched three times. He won last year paired with Eric Quam from Eagle River. His new partner, Van Meter, is trying to reverse a rough patch of races in which he's finished no higher than seventh.

The Aklestad-Johnson duo has never won an Iron Dog but came close with a second-place finish in 2007. Aklestad has crashed out in 75 percent of his Iron Dogs, a high ratio even in a race brutally difficult on man and machine.

The racers chasing the leaders will pray for a mishap by the frontrunners or nasty weather to clump the field.

Minnick and Olstad were out of White Mountain before the fourth-place team of defending champ Quam and rookie Bradley Helwig left Nome. The veteran fifth-place team of seven-time winner Scott Davis and four-time champ Todd Palin were still also in Nome finishing their layover.

The 2,000-mile race should end midday Saturday in downtown Fairbanks.

With the approaching storm, racers were expected to go hard until forced to make a mandatory stop in Kaltag, about 260 miles from Nome and off the Bering Sea coast.

GPS tracking of the racers, available on the official Iron Dog Web site, appeared to be working Thursday morning. But the company in charge of the tracking is warning of possible outages because of the loss of one its satellites in a collision with another satellite over Siberia on Wednesday. The company says it is repositioning other satellites to provide full coverage, but that could take days.

By CRAIG MEDRED

cmedred@adn.com

Craig Medred

Craig Medred is a former writer for the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Dispatch and Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2015.

ADVERTISEMENT