Iditarod 2013 – Day 1
The real racing got under way at 2PM AKST [5PM CST] at Willow with teams leaving on at 2 minute intervals. The teams have to take a 24-hour break on the trail, an 8-hour break on the Yukon, and a final 8-hour break at White Mountain. The start time differential is corrected as part of the 24-hour break.
Dalles Seavey won last year by treating the race as a series of sprints, while John Baker won the year before by maintaining a consistent marathon pace. The weather and trail conditions will govern the most successful strategy.
Only 65 teams will be racing as Ed Stielstra (41) scratched at Campbell Airfield at the end of the parade. He was injured in a training run in late February and knew he couldn’t make the entire race, something he has done 7 times before. Ed is from McMillan, Michigan, so I assume he had already paid for everything and wasn’t going to get his money back, so now he can watch in comfort.
Please note that I have made the decision not to be an ‘Iditarod Insider’, which, among other things, would give me access to the GPS tracking. The Iditarod is very corporate, and the information they provide through their ‘Insider’ is certainly encumbered with non-disclosure and a lot of legal barriers. I follow the race in a blog. If I can’t put what I find out on the blog, it is worthless to me. They would probably want a licensing agreement and controls on what I do with the information. Not going to happen.
All 65 teams are on the trail as of 4:10PM AKST [7:10PM CST]:
Beyond Yentna
1 Martin Buser (2)
2 Scott Janssen (3)
3 Paul Gebhardt (11)
4 Jodi Bailey (4)
5 Lance Mackey (5)
6 Michelle Phillips (7)
7 Jason Mackey (12)
8 Ken Anderson (6)
9 Jeff King (18)
10 Kelley Griffin (9)
11 DeeDee Jonrowe (28)
12 Nicolas Petit (16)
13 Robert Bundtzen (23)
14 Cindy Gallea (17)
15 Aaron Burmeister (24)
16 Charley Bejna (15)R
17 Peter Kaiser (10)
18 Aliy Zirkle (27)
19 Kristy Berington (20)
20 Travis Beals (22)R
At Yentna
21 Newton Marshall (8)
22 Dallas Seavey (19)
23 Gerry Willomitzer (21)
24 John Baker (13)
25 Paige Drobny (14)Q
26 Mike Williams Sr (35)
27 Kelly Maixner (25)
28 Justin Savidis (34)
29 Mitch Seavey (36)
30 Karin Hendrickson (29)
31 Jan Steves (26)
32 Anna Berington (31)
Beyond Willow
33 Jessie Royer (30)
34 Joar Leifseth Ulson (32)R
35 Michael Suprenant (33)
36 Christine Roalofs (37)R
37 Ramey Smyth (38)
38 Rudy Demonski Sr (39)
39 Angie Taggart (40)
40 Linwood Fiedler (42)
41 Bob Chlupach (43)
42 Jake Berkowitz (44)
43 Curt Perano (45)
44 Michael Williams Jr (46)
45 Luan Ramos Marques (47)R
46 Allen Moore (48)
47 Gerald Sousa (49)
48 Mike Ellis (50)
49 Cim Smyth (51)
50 Ray Redington Jr (52)
51 Louie Ambrose (53)R
52 Jessica Hendricks (54)
53 Josh Cadzow (55)Q
54 David Sawatzky (56)
55 Wade Marrs (57)
56 Aaron Peck (58)
57 Jim Lanier (59)
58 Cindy Abbott (60)R
59 Matt Failor (61)
60 Brent Sass (62)
61 Mikhail Telpin (63)Q
62 Matt Giblin (64)
63 Richie Diehl (65)R
64 James Volek (66)R
65 Sonny Lindner (67)
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.
4 comments
I was very disappointed when I found out that Colleen Robertia wouldn’t be running this year, but here’s another photo that falls in the category of a picture telling more than a thousand words:
http://rogueskennel.com/blog/
So, now we know. 🙂
I was going to write about Colleen and Zoya both missing this year, as both race rescues, rejects, and runts. Yeah, that picture definitely explains Colleen’s main reason.
Ed Stielstra really looks bad after taking two head hits from steel posts in his yard. He is going to be out for a while.
I hope they get some shots of Mike Ellis’s team, because he has some beautiful dogs.
The trail is going to be a mess for anyone who isn’t up at the front, because temperatures above freezing are being forecast which is going to chew up the trail for the people in the back – daytime thaws followed by freezing overnight. The ice on the creeks will thin and break-throughs are certain.
Yeah, I do like to follow both Colleen and Zoya. Well, we know what’s happening with Colleen, but I haven’t been able to find any remarks by Zoya as to what happened to her this year.
Usually, it’s money, but Zoya had a bad scare with her dog Miller on one Iditarod, and she was very upset about what happened to Hugh Neff’s Geronimo on the Yukon Quest. Her remarks were that some of these races are so dedicated to being the “toughest” races that it comes at the expense of the dogs. So, maybe it’s a philosophical decision, I don’t know.
And I got a look at Ed Stielstra. Messed his self up pretty bad, didn’t he? There’s a load of power being pulled behind a dogsled and making contact with all the subsequent obstacles.
It’s about 11:00 am EST here, and I noticed that Martin Buser is already checked in at Rainy Pass. Wow. Fast.
I think it is mostly money for a lot of the people who are missing. You have to save for years to do one Iditarod/Quest, so you need sponsorship to do it every year.
The problem with dogs is that they want to go with the pack, so they will hide problems until they get too bad to hide. There needs to be a process for weening them from racing. When you get really tired and sleep deprived, it is difficult to spot your own problems, much less those of the dogs. She is correct that some people consider the races tough guy competitions, rather than the tests of athletic ability on the part of the dogs and intelligence on the part of the musher.
If the dogs aren’t having fun, there is no point in continuing on the trail.