Anchorage Daily News

The Dead Meat Olympics are in full swing at Sullivan Arena.

Twenty chum salmon went under the knife Wednesday night.

Five spotted seals are chillin' in the arena's cooler, waiting for their turn to be sliced and skinned on Friday.

And tonight a pound or two of whale blubber will be diced and devoured.

Of the zillion things that make the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics unique, the three slime events -- the fish-cutting contest, the seal-skinning contest and the muktuk-eating contest -- are without parallel in the sporting world.

PETA will blanch, but the contests aren't meant to shock. They merely mimic life. Filleting fish, skinning seals and savoring muktuk are everyday events for many Alaska Natives; all WEIO does is add a ticking clock to the mix.

They are gender-neutral events that tend to favor the women, which makes sense. "It's from our traditional lifestyle," said Asta Keller, a judge and competitor at the games. "Women are keepers of the food, and men are the hunters."

That goes for the behind-the-scenes action too.

It was Keller who got the phone call from Alaska Airlines on Saturday. "You have five seals waiting for you at the airport," she was told.

The seals came from Barrow courtesy of Charlie Brower, a whaling captain who shot the seals this spring. He's the hunter.

Once in Anchorage, they became Keller's responsibility. She's the keeper of the food, or at least the person assigned to get the seals from the airport to the arena, where they've shared space with keg beer in a cooler since Monday.

Sometime late Friday night, five competitors -- probably elders, who get preference if there are more contestants than seals -- will bring their knives or ulus to the gym floor and slice open the 60-pound seals at the belly. Then they'll peel the skin and blubber away from the flesh as quickly as possible.

If anyone does it in less than 57 seconds, WEIO's oldest record will fall. Rhoda Nageak of Barrow, the Benihana of Native sports, set the record in 1967 and also owns the fish-cutting record with three victories.

The dead-meat competition began late Wednesday with fish cutting, but the real race against the clock started Tuesday.

Carolyn Muegge-Vaughan of the Anchorage Convention & Visitors Bureau volunteered to find 20 salmon, a task she thought would be simple. She called 10th and M Seafood, which readily agreed to donate the fish.

But when the boxes of frozen chums were delivered, Muegge-Vaughan was aghast to see they had already been beheaded and gutted. Beheading and gutting are key elements of the competition.

"I screwed up," she said. "I asked for whole fish, which to me includes heads and guts."

But in the world of commercial fishing, "whole fish" means no heads and no guts. If you want heads and guts, you ask for them "in the round" -- something Muegge-Vaughan learned the hard way. She had one day to find 20 more fish.

She pulled it off with two phone calls. Missy Anderson at PenAir put her in touch with Alaska General Seafood in Naknek, a Bristol Bay village 300 miles from Anchorage.

The processor agreed to donate the fish, and PenAir agreed to fly them at no cost. The boxes of salmon arrived Wednesday afternoon, in time for that night's competition.

As for the gutted fish, they were donated to Bean's Cafe. "So it turned out to be a good story, because everybody wins," Muegge-Vaughan said.

None of the seal parts will go to waste either. Contestants get to keep the skins and carcasses. If they don't want them, others do.

"I make sure I keep everything," said 65-year-old Ben Snowball of Anchorage. "I cut it into little strips to eat, I make oils, I stretch the skin -- I do whatever I can to use all of it."

Charlie Brower is the defending champion in seal skinning, and this year wife Rebecca may enter too. If she does, she won't get advice from her husband of 31 years.

"How would you do it?' she asked him.

"I'm not gonna tell you, because I don't want to get beat," he replied.

Snowball, a former muktuk champion, didn't mind explaining what it takes to scarf down blubber the way Kobayashi inhales hot dogs.

"Good teeth and a good knife," he said.

Actually, whale-eaters looking for speed forgo chewing. "You don't have to chew," Snowball said. "You just swallow. It's kind of oily, so it slides right down. You never even have a chance to taste it."

That's why Snowball usually takes his time in the contest, preferring the taste of muktuk to the taste of victory. At the Dead Meat Olympics, the clock may be ticking, but savoring the moment is part of the fun too.

Beth Bragg's column will appear daily during the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics. Her e-mail address is bbragg@adn.com.

Today's events at Sullivan Arena

• 10 a.m. Eskimo Stick Pull -- Finals

• Noon Alaskan High Kick -- Preliminaries

• 2 p.m. Greased Pole Walk -- Finals

• 3 p.m. Native Baby Contest (Skin, Fur & Cloth)

• Evening (6 p.m. start) -- Eskimo stick pull, four-man carry demonstrations; Native Baby Contest parade and award, Alaska high kick finals, dance performances, men's blanket toss preliminaries, muktuk eating contest finals and Miss World Eskimo Indian Olympics speeches.

• Admission: Daytime events including the arts and crafts fair are free. For evening events, general admission is $10. Ages 5-18 and elders over 65 get in for $8; younger than 5 free.