Alaska News

As layovers end, the big dogs are ready to race

RACE UPDATE:

Martin Buser left Takotna at about 10 p.m. Wednesday, the first to take to the trail after completing his 24-hour layover. Ahead of him Kelley Griffin, Trent Herbst and Cim Smyth had left Ophir earlier in the evening, however all three of them had yet to take their 24s. Lance Mackey had 90 minutes to wait on his layover before he could chase Buser out of Takotna.

TAKOTNA -- Four-time Iditarod winner Martin Buser sat at a long chow hall table beside DeeDee Jonrowe on Wednesday, a nearly empty pie tin in one hand and a plastic fork in the other. The Seaveys -- father Mitch and son Dallas -- talked quietly nearby, Mitch sipping from a steaming Styrofoam cup.

A flat-screen TV displayed race standings on the wall behind them, but for now, none of the mushers were moving.

This is the Iditarod on pause, as the race's big dogs spent the day in the sunny riverside checkpoint for their mandatory 24-hour rest. Buser returned to the trail at about 10 p.m. Wednesday with a team competitors say is perfect for this year's hard, speedy trail.

Lance Mackey planned to follow 90 minutes later behind with what the defending champion says is a hobbled dog team.

Mackey mushed a dozen of his starting 16 dogs into Takotna and expects he could finish the race with as few as seven.

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"I'll be happy to stay in the top 10, and that's just the reality of it. I'm not going to say I have something that I don't," said Mackey, who vowed to continue to fight for a win.

Some of Mackey's dogs are eating poorly, acting lethargic or wheezing, he said. Veteran Iditarod musher Paul Gebhardt, who scratched on Tuesday after injuries and cramping on the relatively warm, hard trail hobbled his dogs, said Mackey's team appeared to be suffering similar troubles.

Meantime, Canadian mushers Sebastian Schnuelle, third into Takotna, and Hans Gatt, eighth, both said their teams look to be recovering from a case of kennel cough.

The race isn't even half over. Anything can happen.

But for now?

Beware Buser, who holds the record for speed in the Iditarod and says this year's fast conditions cater to the strengths of his dogs, descendants of sprint-racers.

"I have one holding me back a little bit," Buser said. "So we'll see how he does coming off of the (24-hour rest)."

The short 25-mile run from Takotna to Ophir allows mushers to test their teams -- and drop any questionable dogs -- before pushing ahead 90 miles to the ghost town of Iditarod.

Buser said he may leave a friendly, 6- or 7-year-old named Roy at the next checkpoint.

"The team as a whole is real healthy," he said as the dogs ate near the bottom of a hill that spills into the Takotna River. Single-engine planes, fitted with skis to land on the frozen river, lined the banks.

Buser wore an iTouch tucked into his fleece headband. He finished a book on tape -- Adam Carolla's "In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks" -- just as he arrived in Takotna.

The MP3 player is stuffed with country and classic rock, among other tunes, Buser said.

Mackey, with his ponytail, black parka and chain-link wedding ring tattoo, is more Metallica.

He's been hedging his chances in interviews lately, but says he's still a threat to win a historic fifth-straight race, dwindling team or not. In Nikolai, fans wondered if the famously unpredictable musher was simply playing head games with his competitors.

"I've been in this exact same checkpoint with some of the same issues. And the outcome was in my favor," Mackey said. "I'm not going down without a fight. I'll be punching the whole way."

A tin of oranges and green bananas sat on the plaid tablecloth before him in the Takotna community building where mushers order burgers and steaks at all hours. Pictures of famous racers -- a young Rick Swenson, Mackey's older brother, Rick, the 1983 champion -- circle the room.

When they're on the trail, mushers often talk about taking it easy in the future, and Mackey said he's thinking of running with a team of puppies next year. Maybe spend a leisurely eight hours at every checkpoint.

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For now, his dogs have what he believes are the early symptoms of kennel cough. A wheel dog named Pat "hasn't eaten probably a pound of food since the starting line," he said.

At about 8:30 p.m., hours before Mackey was scheduled to leave, he stood in the dark as a vet checked one of his leaders, Rev. The dog made a hacking sound.

"That sounds horrible," Mackey said.

In Nikolai on Tuesday, a veterinarian said that with the exception of a team that asked him about kennel cough, he hadn't seen signs of the virus.

Two other top mushers, Sebastian Schnuelle of Paxson, and Hans Gatt of Whitehorse, said their teams have struggled with some kind of bug.

Gatt said Tuesday his new goal was simply a top-10 finish. But on Wednesday his team appeared to be looking better, he said.

"There's still some coughing going on, but they're eating better. The appetite is coming back -- that's the most important thing," Gatt said after walking his dogs during the long layover. "If they can eat, they can run." That said, a couple of leaders started coughing yesterday, he said.

Schnuelle finished second in the Yukon Quest and said his Iditarod pace is just what he'd hoped so far.

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If Buser is driving a sports car, Schnuelle has a station wagon -- good for long, methodical trips.

"He has lots of speed. I don't have any speed. I have 7 mph, and that's it," said Schnuelle, who was due to follow Buser out of Takotna at 11:20 p.m.

The musher dropped one dog in Rainy Pass for what he believes is kennel cough, but said the illness on the team had seemingly vanished.

With a small kennel and aging team, Schnuelle has often talked of retiring. The only way to keep up with the leaders now is take short rests -- going too fast will only lead to injuries, he said.

"I have ... definitely an elderly team," said Schnuelle, who won the humanitarian award for dog care in the 2010 race. "There (are) many dogs in here I have promised to retire in 2008, 2009, 2010 and they don't believe me any more."

Inked

The name of musher Wattie McDonald's wife, Wendy, is tattooed on his ring finger. The Scotsman is one of at least two mushers on the trail this year with a wedding ring inked on their hands.

Mackey has a chain inked around his ring finger. The hand is marked with a long scar leading to the finger the throat-cancer survivor had surgically removed after nerve damage left it useless.

McDonald, meantime, said he hadn't even planned to be in the race this year. Last year, he got a call from an Anchorage businessman who wanted to talk about the race.

"He likes the Scottish thing, ya know."

I said, "Not a chance in hell."

"He said, 'I already paid your entry fee.'

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"I was gobsmacked," McDonald said.

By KYLE HOPKINS

khopkins@adn.com

Kyle Hopkins

Kyle Hopkins is special projects editor of the Anchorage Daily News. He was the lead reporter on the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Lawless" project and is part of an ongoing collaboration between the ADN and ProPublica's Local Reporting Network. He joined the ADN in 2004 and was also an editor and investigative reporter at KTUU-TV. Email khopkins@adn.com

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