Is it time for the Iditarod's old dogs to start worrying?
Nobody should be surprised that a 23-year-old rookie musher Tuesday won one of the world's toughest sled-dog races. New Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race champ Dallas Seavey has been preparing for this for years. Despite his young age, he has the pedigree, the experience, the athleticism, the smarts, and, maybe most of all, the backing to contend in any major distance race.
He was a player early in last year's Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race from Anchorage to Nome and not exactly a slouch at the end of the world's most famous long-distance sled-dog competition. Seavey finished eighth -- two positions in front of his dad, Mitch, the 2004 Iditarod champ. Dallas was by far the youngest musher in the top 10. The next closest in age was 35-year-old Ramey Smyth from Willow, who finished sixth.
Smyth was expected to be a contender. Another musher who grew up on the runners of a dog sled, like Dallas, he has had a team in the Iditarod top 10 for the past several years. Dallas was more of a surprise, though not much. He'd been sixth in a break-through Iditarod in 2009, but with mushers his age nobody every quite knows what to expect.
Jessie Royer burst on the scene with an eighth-place finish in 2005. The Fairbanks musher was then in her 20s. Big things were expected. There was talk of Royer as the heir to the late Susan Butcher, the legendary four-time champ who dominated the race in the late 1980s. It was not to be. Royer ran good, solid races in the years that followed, but she wasn't able to consistently hang with the top tier of Iditarod mushers. She placed in the top 10 only once more, and once dropped out of the top 20. Six years after appearing to be a strong up-and-comer, she is still battling to get back into the heat of the competition.
Pedigree seems to help quest for Iditarod glory
What it takes to win Iditarod, or even come close, is hard to say. Switzerland-born, college-educated, world-traveling, four-time champ Martin Buser of Big Lake and fellow four-time and defending champ Lance Mackey from Fairbanks couldn't be more unlike in some ways.
Mackey grew up in Alaska, struggled with high school, and never saw much of the world. But in other ways, Buser and Mackey are alike. They have an affinity for dogs, an ability to go without sleep, and a comfort level in the Alaska wilderness that just comes to some people.
Dallas showed the latter capability the first time he took a team north on the trail in 2005. It was a Seavey puppy team, and he was under orders not to race. His job was merely to get the dogs used to travel on the trail and get them to Nome. He finished 51st and seemed to love almost every minute of the journey. It was for Dallas and the team a long, pleasant, camping trip with plenty of sleep in all of the checkpoints. He took another puppy team to Nome in 2007 and had an equally good time. They finished 47st.
Then Dallas took a couple years off, finished his college education, contemplated a future as a U.S. Olympic wrestler, got married, and finally returned to Alaska to join his parents in running the family business -- Ididaride Sled Dog Tours. When he came back to Iditarod in 2009, it was as a serious contender who'd studied the game and gained an idea of what it takes to win.
The kid who grew up around sled dogs and became the youngest musher to run the Iditarod in 2005 gave warning then that he could be a serious Iditarod contender. He has posted an even stronger notice now on his way to winning the Quest, which many consider to be the world's second toughest, long-distance sled dog race after the Iditarod. The weather and terrain of the Quest are considered by many to be tougher than for the Iditarod, but the pace of the Iditarod is what generally gains it the nod as the tougher race.
Until the 40-year-old Mackey won the Quest and the Iditarod back-to-back in 2007, some had speculated that different sorts of dogs were competitive in the respective races -- solid Quest plodders and speedy Iditarod swifts. On the way to doing the impossible and winning both races in the same winter, Mackey proved that wrong and then underlined how wrong by winning four Iditarods in a row.
He's back to defend his championship this year, but it looks like he could face serious competition from a newly crowned Quest champ with roots deep in Iditarod history. Dallas's grandfather, Dan Seavey, beat Lance's father, Dick Mackey, in the very first Iditarod in 1973. Dan was third; Dick was seventh. Dan made one more serious bid at an Iditarod victory in 1974 before retiring from competition. Dick hung around until he finally won in 1978. His son, Rick -- Lance's half-brother -- won five years later in 1983. It would be more than a decade before the Seavey clan secured its first, coveted Iditarod victory.
By the start of this decade, the Mackeys, led by Lance, had become the dominant family in Alaska sled-dog racing history with six Iditarod and four Quest victories among them. The Seaveys didn't go away, however. They kept building a better and better kennel, as they showed in putting two teams in the top 10 last year. They now have victories in both the Iditarod and Quest, and Dallas has shown a hint of what the future might hold.
The 50-somethings who've been key players in the Iditarod for years -- Buser, DeeDee Jonrowe from Willow, Paul Gebhardt from Kasilof, Hans Gatt from Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada -- best watch out. Those closing in on 50, like John Baker from Kotzebue, best be concerned. And a whole lot of 40-somethings or near 40-somethings, including Mackey, might want to take an occasional look over the shoulder.
Because time eventually catches up to everyone in athletics. There is always someone younger, fitter and stronger coming along. Fifty-something, four-time champs Doug Swingley and Jeff King recognized that and retired. Meanwhile, the 60-year-old, five-time champ Rick Swenson seems to have made the decision to age into the mukluks once filled by race founder Joe Redington Sr., who was for more than a decade into his 70s the grand old man of the trail.
Redington ran in front a few times in those years. He might even have put a scare in the younger mushers chasing behind. But as Dallas once again showed at the Quest finish line in Fairbanks, youth has its day.
Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com