Iditarod XL Day 5
Lots of news today.
Jim Lanier and Trent Herbst are going for the “Halfway” award at Cripple [$3000 in gold nuggets last year] while the leaders at Takotna have finished their 24-hour and are hitting the trail again. The Busers are taking their 24-hour at Ophir.
Silvia Furtwängler (54) of Norway became the team to scratch. She decided exit the race at Nikolai because of concerns for her own health, after spending almost a full day to make the run from Rohn to NiKolai. She and Sigrid Ekran (24), also of Norway, were the only two of the three teams not from North America this year. [My apologies to Curt Perano (61) of New Zealand.]
Ryan Redington (67) has scratched at Takotna ‘for personal reasons’. He was down to 10 dogs and didn’t seem to be able to move up.
Jim Lanier scored the $3K in nuggets for arriving at Cripple first. I assume that he and Trent will stop for their 24-hour break there, Leaving the front of the race to Mitch and Dallas Seavey with John Baker and Aliy Zirkle chasing.
Obviously Aliy likes leading rather than chasing, so she rested before Cripple and blew through the checkpoint, and Mitch had to play catch-up and go after her. John Baker will continue with his plan, and will not react to anything until the end of the race.
Wade Marrs scratched at Ophir. He didn’t like the look of his dogs. That probably means they are off their stride, or their eating habits, i.e. they aren’t doing what they always do, and you don’t know why. It could be a virus, just fatigue, or even one of the dogs going into heat, but if you can’t pin it down you don’t know how serious it is. There are always more races.
At 11:30PM CST:
Beyond Cripple
1 Aliy Zirkle (14)
2 Mitch Seavey (35)
At Cripple
3 Jim Lanier (3)
4 Trent Herbst (16)
5 Dallas Seavey (34)
6 John Baker (11)
7 Jeff King (10)
8 Lance Mackey (18)
9 DeeDee Jonrowe (17)
10 Sonny Lindner (59)
11 Sigrid Ekran (24)
12 Michael Williams Jr (51)
Beyond Ophir
13 Aaron Burmeister (44)
14 Paul Gebhardt (25)
15 Hugh Neff (27)
16 Ray Redington Jr (2)
17 Rick Swenson (60)
18 Kelley Griffin (20)
19 Gerry Willomitzer (23)
20 Michelle Phillips (26)
21 Peter Kaiser (28)
22 Jake Berkowitz (29)
23 Brent Sass (50)Q
24 Josh Cadzow (55)Q
25 Ken Anderson (39)
26 Tom Thurston (5)
27 Ramey Smyth (21)
28 Cim Smyth (8)
29 Anjanette Steer (32)R
30 Jodi Bailey (6)
31 Bruce Linton (36)
32 Martin Buser (41)
33 Rohn Buser (62)
34 Colleen Robertia (42)
35 Nicolas Petit (9)
36 Curt Perano (61)R
37 Ryne Olson (46)R
38 Justin Savidis (38)
39 Braxton Peterson (63)R
40 Mike Santos (22)R
41 Ed Stielstra (45)
42 Lachlan Clarke (66)
43 William Pinkham (4)
At Ophir
44 Gerald Sousa (58)
45 Zoya DeNure (53)
Beyond Takotna
46 Scott Janssen (37)
47 Karin Hendrickson (43)
48 Kelly Maixner (12)
49 Matt Failor (57)R
At Takotna
50 Anna Berington (33)R
51 Kristy Berington (31)
52 Michael Suprenant (13)
53 Dan Seavey (65)
54 Matt Giblin (52)
Beyond McGrath
55 Pat Moon (15)R
56 Hank Debruin (48)Q
57 Karen Ramstead (56)
58 Art Church Jr (64)
At McGrath
59 Travis Cooper(19)R
60 Jaimee Kinzer (30)R
61 Kirk Barnum (47)
62 Jan Steves (40)R
63 Bob Chlupach (49)
The Mushers in bold are former winners of the Iditarod, while italics indicates Yukon Quest winners. The numbers in parentheses are their Bib numbers. The small “R” indicates a total rookie, while the small “Q” indicates an Iditarod rookie who has completed a Yukon Quest.
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.
