Yukon Quest – Day 13
Update at 10:00PM CST. Mike Ellis established another record for his purebred Siberian Husky team. Although Kelley Griffin had the last team with a payday at the end, people are still arriving.
Cindy Barrand brought in 13 of her original 14 dogs, but she and Jennifer Raffaeli both got 30 minute penalties for help with sled repairs.
Update: Terry Williams became the second scratch of the race when he pulled out at Carmacks. Just before his arrival, an 8-year-old dog, Bags, died. The initial autopsy indicates that the dog had a heart defect that wasn’t audible during screening. The dogs exhibited no signs of problems during three vet checks performed during the race. Williams was running a conservative race at the back, learning the trail, more than striving to win.
At Whitehorse
13 Mike Ellis (18)
14 David Dalton (3)
15 Kelley Griffin (15)
16 Cindy Barrand (9)R
17 Bart DeMarie (14)R
18 Peter Fleck (24)R
19 Jennifer Raffaeli (16)RBeyond Braeburn
20 Katie Davis (6)R
21 Pierre-Antoine Heritier (19)RAt Braeburn
22 Jocelyne LeBlanc (8)R
Official Yukon Quest links: Live Tracking, Current Standings, and Current News.
The Mushers in bold are former winners of the Quest, the numbers in parentheses are their Bib numbers, and the small “R” indicates a rookie.
Note: This post will be updated during the day, and the map changed on all posts to reflect the current situation.
All posts on the Yukon Quest can be seen by selecting “Yukon Quest” from the Category box on the right sidebar.
2 comments
yay for the siberians!
several of the purebred groups, after many years of criticism [much of it justified] that they were breeding only for looks and not for good health, good temperament, or preserving any of the working qualities of the original breed, established groups to come up with titles and contests and so forth that encouraged breeding dogs that besides being beautiful could do whatever their ancestors had been bred for.
the akc sleddog breeds all did a pretty good job of instituting some programs, and long-distance, high-speed, sled-pulling races like the yukon quest and the iditarod are similar to the work that siberians were originally bred for, so i’m always glad to see them in these races.
Heritier of Switzerland is also running purebred Siberians and has been quite successful with them in Europe. This was a training run for him, and his dogs. He also carried his senior lead dog through a couple of checkpoints to be sure his juniors were up to the task.
Most of the dogs are various degrees of Siberian and Malamute, with a dash of other breeds.