March 06, 2003

TIME FOR THE DOGGIES

Your Iditarod update:

Looks like Norwegian musher and full-time firefighter Robert Sorlie is still in the lead, with a three-hour head start out of the village of Galena.

What Sorlie doesn't want to see is the nightmare of every musher on the trail: musher Martin Buser, who is in second place, just three hours behind.

Sorlie left Galena with only 13 dogs. They start with roughly 16 to 18 and pare down to about 10 by the time they reach the coast. That Sorlie only has 13 and he hasn't made it to the halfway point yet is a bad sign.

Having Buser right behind him (a three-hour lead is nothing in mushing) bodes even worse.

In addition to his three first-place finishes, Buser has had 11 top 10 finishes. Since his first race in 1980, he has won more than $400,000 in purses.

But the cool thing about Buser is that he's has won more dog-care awards, four, than races. He even won both awards, as well as a slew of others, in 1997.

He loves this race, to the point he named his sons, Nikolai and Rohn, after two villages that serve as checkpoints on the Iditarod. His dogs are always among the fastest and best conditioned in the field. His equipment is tops and his institutional knowledge is expert level.

As Sorlie's wife, Elin, was quoted by The Anchorage Daily News: "Cool down. They ain't halfway. Anything can happen."

This passage in the story may prove telling:



Through the first 325 miles of the race, Sorlie has run more than he has rested.

This is a dangerous gamble so early in the competition. Most mushers believe teams need to rest about an hour for every hour they run to maintain their endurance. Dogs have shown themselves physiologically capable of going with less rest, but more than one team pushed too hard has rebelled.

Dogs asked to do more than they think they can do will mutiny. Over the years, some mushers have been forced to sit for hours, even days, waiting on a tired team to regather itself and decide it can go on.

Team revolts have happened to some of the best too. Five-time champ Rick Swenson from Two Rivers had a team balk at the Safety Roadhouse just outside of Nome one year. It cost him the race. Susan Butcher of Manley went on to win. Swenson wrote it off as one of the difficulties of the game.




I'll go ahead and say it: Sorlie is toast.

That doesn't mean Buser is a lock, though. All it takes is one bad storm on the coast to equalize the field. Three-time winner and Iditarod Hall of Famer Jeff King is in third. That should scare them both.


Posted by Jeff at March 6, 2003 08:54 AM | TrackBack
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