You’d think it would be easy to practice social distancing in a 2,645-mile race, but after 1,440 miles the Iron Dog snowmachine race across Alaska is too close to call.
Less than a minute separated the top two teams when the race hit Kotzebue on Wednesday afternoon. Robby Schachle of Big Lake and Brad George of Wasilla were the first to reach town at 3:07 p.m., and 58 seconds later Brett Lapham of Willow and Zack Weisz of Wasilla joined them.
About 12 minutes later, at 3:20 p.m., Bryan Leslie and Casey Boylan arrived in third place.
Teams spent the day traveling about 440 miles from Nome, veering north at Koyuk for the Kotzebue loop, a stretch that takes snowmachiners past Buckland, Selawik, Kiana and Noorvik before reaching Kotzebue.
All 18 teams will spend the night in Kotzebue. From there it’s about 1,200 miles from the finish line at Big Lake, where the top teams are expected Saturday around noon.
Temperatures are below zero in the Kotzebue area — minus-14 in the afternoon with the potential of minus-20 overnight.
The trail is fast and the usual attrition of the rough, high-speed race hasn’t taken much of a toll yet — as of Wednesday afternoon, only three teams had scratched. Among the scratches are defending champions Tyler Aklestad and Nick Olstad.
Schachle and George appear to be moving slightly faster on their Ski-Doos than Lapham and Weisz are traveling on their Polaris machines. They had the fastest course time from the start in Big Lake to Nome, but Lapham and Weisz spent a scant 3 minutes and 38 seconds on the clock working on their machines Tuesday in Nome. That allowed them to leapfrog Schachle and George, who needed a little more time to make repairs.
Lapham and Weist were the first to leave Nome at 8 a.m. Wednesday, 6.5 minutes ahead of Schachle and George. But again the Ski-Doo team had more trail speed and managed to bridge the gap and claim the narrow lead in Kotzebue.
From Kotzebue, the loop will take racers through Buckland again before returning to the traditional race trail at Koyuk. Then it’s on to Big Lake.
Thursday will conclude the Iron Dog’s race-within-the-race: Whoever clocks the fastest time on the 375-mile Kotzebue loop will receive a $3,000 bonus from Nana Management Systems.