Iditarod

Dallas Seavey's throwback victory flashes back to old strategy

Former Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race champ Mitch Seavey says he and son, Dallas, the new champion, didn't plan the race the way it turned out, but things couldn't have worked out much better for Team Seavey. Mitch ran the race in a style that's become familiar in recent years and finished seventh. Dallas ran a throwback race and won.

The 25-year-old from Willow was patient, smart and a little lucky. In the end, it made him the youngest champ in Iditarod history. He bumped aside two 26-year-olds, Rick Swenson and the late Carl Huntington, the only racer to win both the Iditarod and the Fur Rendezvous World Championship for sprint mushers.

Swenson, 61, from Two Rivers, was in 31st place Wednesday afternoon, behind a pack of rookies and in danger of falling out of the money. But when the five-time champion was at the height of his powers in the 1980s, he won in a way similar to what Dallas pulled off.

When Swenson ruled the trail, the saying was, "The race doesn't start until the Iditarod hits the Bering Sea Coast.'' A five-time Iditarod winner, the only one in Iditarod history, Swenson sealed his victories on the coast, often after letting others break a lot of trail for 800 miles north from Knik, the historic old Iditarod town from where the race then began.

Slow and steady

Swenson used to scoff at the "rabbits'' who went out fast at the start of every Iditarod in the 1970s and 1980s, only to fade back into the pack as the race neared its finished.

All of that began changing in the 1990s, however. Race officials started putting in a better trail, relieving the racers from so much trail-breaking duty. Winning times started dropping significantly from a 12-day race in the early 1980s to an 11-day race by the start of the 1990s, to a 9-day race by the middle of that decade -- the race having lost a whole day in-between when the Saturday race "start'' in Anchorage was declared purely ceremonial, with the official race clock not starting until Sunday afternoon.

Early in the new millennium, the finishing time went under 9 days, and last year John Baker from Kotzebue set a new Iditarod record of 8 days, 18 hours. There was talk then of an 8 1/2-day race. And this year there were mushers who told friends before the start the race that they'd set eight-day schedules for the race to Nome. It cost them. One by one, mushers who went out too fast too soon faded.

ADVERTISEMENT

Mitch Seavey confessed he fit in that group. He took a gamble on the run to the race's halfway point at Cripple, he said. He asked his team to make a long run on soft trail, plodding through snow like sand. It took the speed out of his team. Seavey's dog were still moving down the trail, but not with their earlier speed. They were fine, he said, just slow.

"I am blaming myself for making a mistake,'' he said. "I had every reason to think we could do that.''

On a hard-packed trail, they probably could have managed fine. But the trail was soft. The dogs didn't trot so much as they churned toward Cripple on a taxing run. That they came down with some sort of bug didn't help. In a way, canine athletes aren't any different than human athletes. Pushed to the edge of endurance they become susceptible to illness.

Four-time champ Jeff King's dogs caught something that knocked them back to the point where they just up and quit outside of Unalakleet.

King had to get Iditarod officials with snowmobiles help haul them into town, where he quit the race. He'd blown into Rohn, the first checkpoint over Rainy Pass in the Alaska Range third. He was just ahead of Mitch, and just behind the pace being set by then race leader Aliy Zirkle from Two Rivers.

Dallas wasn't even in the checkpoint yet. He was way back in 31st, still on the trail from Puntilla Lake over the Pass and down through the Dalzell Gorge. He'd taken it easy on the long climb up into the Alaska Range. He wouldn't start to move up until the race entered the Interior.

Would he have caught up if the trail had been hard and fast as in years past? No one will ever know. There is no way to tell.

But this much is known. Zirkle, who'd been near the front of the race much of the way, took charge of Iditarod as it moved onto the Yukon River at Ruby. By Kaltag, more than 130 miles downriver, she appeared to be in complete control. Her team was moving near the same speed as Seavey's, but she was three hours in front of him.

And then came the Kaltag Portage. Often, the trail that starts through thick forest there before climbing into open meadows and entering the valley of the Unalakleet River is hard and fast. This year it was anything but. The snow was soft, like sand. Zirkle and her tired dog team struggled, both physical and mentally. She looked the worse for wear when the gang reached the Bering Sea coast.

Running and resting on the coast

At Unalakleet there on the coast, Allen Moore, Zirkle's husband and a veteran musher, observed that the more than 13-hour crossing of the portage had been the longest continuous run of the race for Zirkle's team. The dogs still looked good. Moore observed they were perky and wagging their tails, but they'd lost a step. It was almost the same thing that had happened to Mitch's dogs on the run to Cripple.

Dallas's dogs, meanwhile, had more rest when they hit the trail from Kaltag and Unalakleet. The trail had been partially broken by Zirkle's team and there was fresh scent on the trail. Both of which made for easier going for the dogs, the first physically, the second mentally. And Aaron Burmeister from Nenana was on the trail with Dallas for at least part of the way, helping to relieve the trail-breaking load.

Both of those mushers would reach Unalakleet and blow on through while Zirkle rested, worried she'd asked too much of her dogs and giving them a little extra time to recuperate.

She stayed an hour and 11 minutes longer in Unalakleet than Dallas. She finished second by an hour and a few seconds behind him at Nome.

Would it have been different if she'd urged her team out of Unalkaleet hot on his heels? Probably. The odds are good she would have been even farther back. A championship-caliber Iditarod team walks a fine line. The dogs cannot run forever. They need to rest, and if they do not get enough rest, they slow down -- sometimes radically so.

Zirkle knew that. So, too, did Seavey.

His decision to blow through the Elim checkpoint on up the coast from Unalakleet might have sealed the race for him. He only went a few miles out of Elim and camped around a headland. It was crafty move. Zirkle came in not far behind him, but she did not know he was camping. She thought he'd sealed the deal. She rested her team in Elim for two hours, banking rest to make sure she would hang onto second.

Few other mushers stayed in Elim so long. Most of the leaders blew on through, knowing there was a mandatory 8-hour rest in White Mountain only about 45 miles down the trail. Might Zirkle have had a chance of catching Dallas if she'd pulled out of Elim immediately, too? That again is hard to say, but by that point hers dogs appeared to be on the rebound while Dallas's were fading.

ADVERTISEMENT

On the final, 80-mile leg of the race -- after the 8-hour rest at White Mountain -- her team was exactly the same speed as his. If they'd been minutes apart at White Mountain instead of more than an hour, it would have been close. But the world is full of woulda-coulda's. The reality of Iditarod 2012 was that Dallas managed a smart and skillful race. Those who know sled-dog racing best say it's a little premature to start talking about the 25 year old as "great,'' something the commentators for Iditarod.com were doing Tuesday as the race drew to a close.

But Dallas Seavey made it clear he's a musher to watch. He put down a mark. His winning time was not great -- the slowest in the last three years. But the way in which he won was masterful. He ran the kind of race Swenson ran four times when he was the King of the the Iditarod Trail back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Another race or two like this, and it might be time to at least declare Dallas the next prince.

Contact 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.

ADVERTISEMENT