Four years in the making, the Tustumena 200 sled dog race was finally able to crown its 30th champion Sunday as Cim Smyth, 40, of Big Lake, edged Nicholas Petit of Girdwood by three minutes Sunday afternoon to earn one of the biggest victories of his career.
Later in the afternoon, back-of-the-pack racers pushed through wind-driven snow in the Caribou Hills of the Kenai Peninsula that the race director called a "blizzard."
Smyth covered the 176-mile course in 1 day, 2 hours, 3 minutes. Dave Turner was third in 1:02:48, with two-time Iditarod champion Mitch Seavey fourth in 1:02:50.
"I knew I had time to make up on Nick … and I just let (my dogs) roll as fast as they wanted to, and they just cranked through there," Smyth told KSRM Radio after the race. "It was unbelievably fast, really. They were cruising along like they were on a stage race."
Smyth was more than a half-hour behind at the race's turnaround at Fritz Creek, but he's known as a fast finisher who has four times won the Iditarod prize for the best time over that race's last 22 miles from Safety to Nome .
The Tustumena 200 attracts a field brimming with Iditarod veterans as well as rookies looking for races that help them qualify for a run to Nome. First contested in 1984, the T-200 was set to celebrate its 35th anniversary four years ago, but warm weather and a lack of snow conspired to cancel that race. The same scenario repeated again and again in the subsequent years, leaving some mushers to wonder whether global warming had all but ended Peninsula sled-dog racing.
Perhaps not. Fittingly, perhaps, Sunday saw "a blizzard up in the hills," according to race director Tami Murray. "It was snowing at the finish line too.
"We were revived today."
The steep Caribou Hills often see blowing snow at elevation, making the trail tough to follow, so race volunteers put out more than 2,000 reflective markers before Saturday's race start.
The T-200 $30,000 purse is split among the top 20 finishers, meaning just one musher will miss sharing in the bounty. Twenty-one racers started.
Smyth's victory, worth $6,000, should be his biggest of the season. The son of Iditarod legend Bud Smyth decided to pull out of the Iditarod, which he's completed 13 times, finishing as high as fifth. However, his brother Ramey, 41, remains among the 75 Iditarod entrants.
Tustumena 200 results
1) Cim Smyth, 26 hours, 3 minutes; 2) Nicholas Petit, 26:06; 3) Dave Turner, 26:48; 4) Mitch Seavey, 26:50; 5) Joar Leifseth Ulsom, 27:58; 6) Noah Burmeister, 28:02; 7) Wade Marrs, 28:03; 8) Ray Redington, 28:12; 9) Monica Zappa, 28:15; 10) Tim Osmar, 28:21; 11) Paul Gebhardt, 28:43; 12) Anna Berington, 29:09; 13) Dean Osmar, 30:24;