Iditarod 2011 – Day 10 – Baker Wins
John left White Mountain with 10 puppies at 12:04AM local time, and Ramey left 50 minutes later with 9. Their race is down to the 77 mile final sprint to Nome.
John was through Safety at 6:48AM local with 22 miles to go.
In the rookie race, Nicolas Petit (14) has a two-hour lead on Kelly Maixner (55) beyond Shaktoolik, but Kelly has a 3 puppy advantage – 13 to 10. Kelly has been moving up the rankings steadily.
Note: Petit is running Jim Lanier’s all-white huskies. Jim is laid up after hip surgery, but his team is making the run.
Ramey went through Safety at 8:13AM local, +1:25, and had to drop a dog.
John Baker, an Inupiaq from Kotzebue, has won and set a new record. His exact time hasn’t been posted, but the unofficial time is 2 or 3 hours faster than Martin Buser’s 2002 pace. He has been a consistent top-ten finisher, and this was his year. The puppies wanted to get out of the heat in the “south”.
From the Anchorage Daily News: “Baker crossed the line at 9:46 a.m., finishing the race that began March 6 in Willow in 8 days, 19 hours, 46 minutes, 39 seconds and slicing three hours off the previous record.”
Update: Three teams have scratched. Mike Santos (27) scratched because his team didn’t want to play any more. Kris Hoffman (8) and Robert Bundtzen (10) both scratched when they ran out of leaders for their teams.
At Nome
1 John Baker (53)
2 Ramey Smyth (30) +1:04
3 Hans Gatt (23)
4 Dallas Seavey (21)
5 Hugh Neff (35)
6 Sebastian Schnuelle (31)
Beyond Safety
7 Ray Redington, Jr (3)
8 Peter Kaiser (54)
Beyond White Mountain
9 Jessie Royer (58)
10 DeeDee Jonrowe (2)
11 Ken Anderson (43)
12 Aliy Zirkle (18)
13 Sven Haltmann (45)
14 Michael Williams, Jr. (41)
15 Sonny Lindner (52)
At White Mountain
16 Lance Mackey (17)
17 Michelle Phillips (39)
Beyond Elim
18 Martin Buser (11)
19 Robert Nelson (51)
20 Karin Hendrickson (37)
21 Rick Swenson (49)
22 Bruce Linton (13)
At Elim
23 Allen Moore (5)
24 Matt Hayashida (61)
Beyond Koyuk
25 Kelley Griffin (20)
26 Trent Herbst (4)
27 Nicolas Petit (14)R
28 Cim Smyth (59)
29 Ed Stielstra (56)
At Koyuk
30 Kristy Berington (7)
31 Kelly Maixner (55)R
32 Lachlan Clarke (42)
Beyond Shaktoolik
33 Jodi Bailey (16)R
Beyond Unalakleet
34 Paul Johnson (46)
At Unalakleet
35 Magnus Kaltenborn (22)R
36 Wattie McDonald (38)
37 Cain Carter (48)R
38 Justin Savidis (63)
Beyond Kaltag
39 Billy Snodgrass (24)
40 Gerald Sousa (62)
41 Matt Giblin (60)
At Kaltag
42 Angie Taggart (19)R
43 Tom Thurston (25)
44 Scott Janssen (32)R
45 Kirk Barnum (47)
46 G.B. Jones (40)
Beyond Eagle Island
47 Heather Siirtola (50)
48 Ellen Halverson (26)
- The Mushers in bold are former winners of the Iditarod, the numbers in parentheses are their Bib numbers, and the small “R” indicates a rookie.
- These are the official standings. That means they are official, not that they are correct. Things jump around a lot as people decide to update the standings. This problem is especially bad in the back of the pack, as no one bothers to update those standings when the lead is changing.
- This post will be updated during the day, and the map changed on all posts to reflect the current situation.
- All posts on the Iditarod can be seen by selecting “Iditarod” from the Category box on the right sidebar.
6 comments
Congratulations to John Baker – it’s nice to see a new name up there. Wow, what a record!
I see that so far DeeDee and Jessie are still in the top 10 – hope at least one of them can keep their rank. Aliy isn’t really far behind either.
Didn’t know that someone else had Jim Lanier’s dogs. Seems like a nice gesture to loan his dogs to someone else.
all white, eh? reminds me of that joke about the white piece of paper with three black dots on it – q: what’s this? a: a polar bear in the snow eating marshmallows.
John could have won last year but he made a colossal mistake – he thought he had wandered off the trail and wasted five hours before he discovered that he hadn’t.
The record he broke was set on the Northern Trail, which is easier and faster than this year’s Southern trail. So he holds the overall race record, and set a mark for the Southern Trail that will take forever to break.
Yep, Aliy is up there now, and they are coming down the Mountain as 9, 10. and 11.
Jim had paid all the fees, and his dogs were ready for the race, so he wanted them to run. One of the selling points for dogs from his Northern Whites Kennel is participation in the Iditarod. I assume that Petit is a handler at the kennel and was substituted when Jim had to have surgery.
Trent Herbst, Newton Marshall, and a few of the others, lease teams to run the Iditarod.
The ADN has been running a Meet the Sled Dogs feature. Check out Allen Moore’s dog Scruggs. No dog that has obviously practiced looking that innocent can be anything but trouble.
Marshmallows? I know, reality doesn’t count in jokes or politics.
No dog that has obviously practiced looking that innocent can be anything but trouble.
What a look on that face! I used to have a dog that looked just like that when I would come home. I could always depend that she’d chewed one of my shoes/socks or peed. Guaranteed.
Yep, Jessie made it at #10! With Aliy and DeeDee right behind, they all made a darn good showing this year. Now, who’s the closest rookie, I wonder?
It’s a real shame that Newton Marshall had to scratch. His is an interesting story – who would have ever thought someone would go from Jamaica to Alaska. After all that hard work and going halfway to the other side of the world, it’s too bad he couldn’t finish this year.
I covered the rookies today. Petit and the Northern Whites look good to take the rookie crown, and Jodie looks good to finish her rookie runs of the Quest and the Iditarod in the same year, which is a hell of an achievement, given the conditions on this year’s Quest. She picked the worst two routes to run on, as the odd year trails in both events tend to produce much slower times and many fewer finishers.
He was running a Mackey team, and given what happen to Lance this year, I have to wonder if his kennel wasn’t the source of the problem. He ran in an international in Colorado, instead of the Quest, and I wonder if the dogs didn’t pick something up there.
Newton gets to go home to Jamaica, in the Caribbean. That is not exactly exile to Siberia.
I know, reality doesn’t count in jokes or politics.
especially in politics.