Iditarod

Dallas Seavey opens wide lead in waning hours of Iditarod

WHITE MOUNTAIN -- Dallas Seavey was working like a madman as his dog team rolled over a 1,000-foot summit mushers called "Little McKinley" and down the other side to Golovin Bay and on to White Mountain late Monday at the lead of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. From the air, he looked like some sort of "flying squirrel" on the sled behind the team -- his arms methodically pounding ski poles into the ground to push the sled ahead, a leg kicked out behind as he pedaled between the runners to help the dogs.

The greatest compliment that can be paid an Alaska musher is that he is "the hardest working dog in the team." Seavey clearly appeared intent on earning that accolade on a cold Alaska day with the temperature down below zero and a bitter wind kicking up thin curtains of snow as it cut across the barren, snow-covered tundra.

And Seavey was loving every minute of it.

Pumped up on the energy of leading the race, he finally hit this checkpoint 14 minutes after midnight and said "I think this team can do it." Mushers spend a mandatory eight hours resting at White Mountain before taking off on the last 80 miles of trail to the finish line in Nome. Seavey opened up a significant, 71-minute lead over Aily Zirkle of Two Rivers, who did not pull in until 1:25 a.m.

Zirkle all but conceded the race, saying, "I'm not going to catch Dallas.

"I'm on the defensive now," she said, referring to the fast-moving threat behind her, Ramey Smyth. Zirkle, currently in second place, is positioned about midway between the two mushers.

Zirkle has steadily run her team on long hauls, using their stamina for long distances to her advantage. But it wasn't enough to block Seavey from seizing the lead.

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"They're not fast enough," Zirkle answered when a veterinarian asked if she'd been having any problems with her team.

The Iditarod on Tuesday morning was clearly Seavey's to lose.

"I guess I'm pretty stoked," he said, as he signed the check-in sheet and a race judge went through the bag on his sled to make sure he was still carrying his mandatory gear -- sleeping bag, ax, dog food cooker, extra dog food, booties, vet book, mail to be carried to Nome and more.

Make way for Iditarod's new guard

After more than a week and about 900 miles of racing from Willow to the Bering Sea coast, the 25-year-old musher from Willow had maneuvered himself into position to win "The Last Great Race" as his father had before back in 2004. Mitch never got back to the winner's circle; now 52, he was first among the older set of mushers on Monday. He was running fifth behind his son, Zirkle, Ramey Smyth from Willow, Aaron Burmeister from Nome, and Peter Kaiser from Bethel. Kaiser at age 23 was another musher young enough to be Seavey's son. And two others are close to that age.

Burmeister and Smyth are both 36, thought the latter seems older given that he's been racing Iditarod seemingly forever. The 2011 runner-up, Smyth ran his first race in 1994, cracked the top-10 four years later, and has been a consistent top-10 finisher for a decade now. Smyth started this Iditarod off slow and easy and then called up his team to put on a Bering Sea coast push that looked for a time like it might reel in Seavey and the other leaders, but came up short.

They are all, along with Dallas, part of the Iditarod's new guard, and they appear this year to be moving clearly to the front. The last of the other old timers still in the hunt, four-time champ Jeff King from Denali Park, had to scratch at Unalakleet after his dogs quit short of the checkpoint.

Dallas Seavey admitted Monday night he had some worries about how much gas his dogs had left when he took off from Elim, a small Native village about 40 miles from here. He got the dogs out of town, went around a headland and camped just out of sight of the village. Dallas said his dogs needed a rest after a long push into the wind from Kokyuk; he'd found a good, quiet place for them to take one; and the move put pressure on Zirkle. He said he wanted the woman who has led the race for much of the time since near halfway thinking that her competition was long gone.

With his team out of sight, he said, he figured she would start trying to ensure a second-place finish instead of continuing a race to win and taking the risk she could fall several places down in the rankings if she made a mistake. There are tens of thousands of dollars at stake for a musher who makes that mistake, and Zirkle -- more so than Seavey -- had the lead dogs of Smyth and Burmeister hot on here heels.

Still, it was clear Seavey was not totally sure Zirkle, a former Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race champ like himself, would fall for his little trick. His first question when he and his nine dogs hit this checkpoint was "what I have to find out about is where's my company at, where's Aily." No one was quite sure exactly how far back she was on the trail, but she was a ways back.

"She should be proud of her gang," Dallas said, adding that he felt "beat" from doing everything he could to help his team gain an edge on hers. He was exhausted from running the uphills, he said, and his legs were cramping. He needed a bath, and he had a frostbitten toe. But he was excited, too, jumping around, working the small crowd, signing autographs.

If nobody "gets here in a few minutes," he said, he was confident he'd pretty much have the 2012 Iditarod locked up. He'd run with most of the top teams at some point along the trail, he said, and they were all at or near the same speed. Nobody appeared to have the dogs to catch him going over the Topkok Hills to Nome if he had a lead of tens of minutes.

When no other mushers had shown up within 20 minutes of his arrival, he let slip that "speed is how we won this race." His team, he said, simply had more of it than any other. His only regret was that he'd be beating his dad to the finish line. "I think he always hoped (this) would come after he retired," Dallas said, but added that he himself had always wanted to be the youngest musher to win Iditarod.

He was close Monday night. All he had to do was hang on until Nome today. If he does, he'll push aside Rick Swenson, who was 26 when he won his first. Swenson went to win four more. He remains the winningest musher in Iditarod history. He was on the trail still plugging away at the back of the top-20 when the younger Seavey hit this checkpoint.

Contact Jill Burke at jill(at)alaskadispatch.com and Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.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.

Jill Burke

Jill Burke is a former writer and columnist for Alaska Dispatch News.

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