Less than 12 minutes separated the top two teams when the Tesoro Iron Dog snowmachine race stopped for the day this afternoon in the Yukon River village of Tanana.
Racers are held in Tanana overnight to ensure a midday Saturday finish in Fairbanks, about 230 miles to the west. Racers will head across the frozen Yukon to the Tanana River Saturday morning and follow it upstream past the communities of Manley Hot Springs and Nenana to the finish line.
Almost since the race left Big Lake on Sunday, Polaris Dragon drivers Todd Minnick, 29, and Nick Olstad, 26, have led. They were more than half an hour in front in Nome when the race paused for more than a day on the edge of the Bering Sea.
Since leaving Nome for Fairbanks, however, Tyler Aklestad, 23, from Palmer, and Tyson Johnson, 29, from Eagle River, have been pecking away at that lead. For a time Friday, they were even ahead as the two front-running teams took turns breaking trail up the snow-covered Yukon.
Whether the two Ski-Doo racers will prove to be Polaris Dragon slayers remains to be seen.
"We're both young and real competitive," Minnick, 29, said before last year's race. "He's pushing me, and I've pushing him. Nick (26) is a good, fast, smart kid."
The trail from Tanana to Fairbanks is reportedly smoother and faster than the snow-filled trail between Ruby and Tanana. Racers reported they backed off the throttles on Friday for fear of running out of gas as their sleds labored through areas of deep snow.
Johnson said that if the trail to Fairbanks is good, it's going to be tough to close the 12-minute gap.
Whichever team prevails, a new guard will take charge of the world's longest and toughest snowmachine race.
Among the four racers in the top two teams, only Olstad has claimed victory before. He was the rare rookie to do so when he paired with McKenna to win in 2005.
And the reign of Arctic Cat snowmobiles in the winner's circle appeared to be coming to an end, too. Minnick and Olstad are on Polaris Dragons, Aklestad and Johnson are driving Ski-Doo 600s while the third place team of Marc McKenna, a defending champion, and Dusty Van Meter, a three-time winner, are also aboard Ski-Doo 600s -- but 43 minutes behind the frontrunners.
Arctic Cats have owned the Iron Dog winner's circle since Van Meter and partner Mark Carr drove a pair of Ski-Doos to victory in 2004. A Polaris team has not won since 2001.
A team of 23-year-olds, Tyler Huntington and Mike Morgan, were running fifth, just 14 minutes behind the fourth-place team of Eric Quam, who won with McKenna last year, and rookie Bradley Helwig.
Huntington, of Galena, staged the fastest second-half in 2008 Iron Dog, when he and partner Pete Demonski surged from eighth place in Nome to third at the finish.
"We've been smoking' since Kaltag," Huntington said at the time.
Rough trail on the final stretch and Huntington's familiarity with the terrain could prove an advantage.
The National Weather Service was about an inch of snow and winds up to 15 mph for Tanana on Saturday.
Leader board: Updated standings
2010 Trail map: Updated race standings
By CRAIG MEDRED
cmedred@adn.com