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Iditarod Update – Race Day 9 Midday — Why Now?
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Iditarod Update – Race Day 9 Midday

by Bryan

map of the Iditarod Trail1&2 in Koyuk, 3 on the Sound, 4-9 in Shaktoolik, and the others on their way.
Current Standings:

1 Lance Mackey (6)
2 Jeff King (11)
3 Ken Anderson (9)
4 Hans Gatt (38)
5 Martin Buser (13)
6 Paul Gebhardt (69)
7 Mitch Seavey (33)
8 Kjetil Backen (42)
9 Rick Swenson (61)
10 Ed Iten (32)
11 Jim Lanier (4)
12 Jessie Royer (3)
13 Aaron Burmeister (14)
14 Sebastian Schnuelle (68)
15 Zack Steer (26)
16 John Baker (67)
17 DeeDee Jonrowe (39)
18 Ramey Smyth (48)
19 Gerry Willomitzer (7)
20 Hugh Neff (16)

New rookie leader with 26th place occupied by Melissa Owens (59) who arrived in Unalakleet 20 minutes before William Kleedehn (66).

Rachael Scdoris (55) is on the trail out of Galena in 64th place.

Steven Madsen (57) is in the back at Ruby, but it is 83rd place after Art Church Jr. (18) scratched in Ruby and Peter Bartlett (93) scratched in Nulato.

2 comments

1 hipparchia { 03.10.08 at 10:14 pm }

wow. mackey’s down to 12 dogs, king still has 16, and there’s 4 minutes between them leaving koyuk. 170 miles left to go.

this strikes me as a reasonable strategy:

King believes his strategy of letting dogs “rest,” that is run without pulling for hours at a time, is not only a positive thing, it’s the reason his team had so much “pizazz” this morning. He reflected back to a movie he’d seen recently depicting the Roman army defeating its enemies. The soldiers would fight until tired, then be replaced by reinforcements while they rested, he said. Likewise, a dog that’s tired can run along without pulling, gathering its energy and desire to pull on a later run.

2 Bryan { 03.10.08 at 11:08 pm }

There’s a mandatory 8-hour stop at White Mountain. A lot of teams have a lighter “sprint sled” there that they switch to, and they generally reduce the number of dogs for the final run into Nome.

Nome is where we find out who guessed right. King has a great team and Mackey is missing a Golden Harness lead dog who was injured in a fight. It looks like King’s year, but so did last year.