Iditarod 2013 – Day 14
This is the last day of the race. This morning only minutes separated Luan and Mikhail, and Christine only has an hour lead over Bob, so things aren’t quite settled at the moment.
Mikhail has had to finally drop a puppy at White Mountain.
Update: Mikhail is showing no interest in catching Luan, but Luan is really roaring down the trail at better than 8mph.
Bob is only 8 minutes behind Christine having shaved an hour off her lead between Elim and White Mountain.
Update: Dorado’s cause of death has been determined to be: asphyxiation as the result of being buried by snow in severe wind conditions. He was chained and couldn’t move, so he was smothered by drifting snow.
Finished At Nome
45 Mike Williams Sr (35)
46 Gerald Sousa (49)
47 Louie Ambrose (53)R
48 Angie Taggart (40)
49 Luan Ramos Marques (47)R
50 Mikhail Telpin (63)Q
51 Cindy Gallea (17)
Beyond White Mountain
52 James Volek (66)R
At White Mountain
53 Christine Roalofs (37)R
54 Bob Chlupach (43) Φ
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.
5 comments
Okay, this is just awful.
They had blizzard conditions and no one could figure out where the drifts would be based on the wind direction. I know that they don’t use snow fence, like they do in the Northeast, but they should have been able to rig a wind block of some kind.
Getting out of the wind is basic to Arctic survival. I just don’t understand why no one anticipated the problem.
You know, Bryan, I think what bothers us most about this is that the dog was in the “custody” of human beings. We know that he would have been better off just left alone. When humans take away the right of a dog to fend for himself, they have a great responsbility to make sure that they’re doing at least as good a job as the dog could do on his own. And our hope is that they will have a better life.
I know that dogs get sick or injured during the Iditarod, but dogs do get sick and injured during lots of daily events when no one is at fault for it. My large dog just got a small gash across his stomach area while running through the woods yesterday. He’ll be fine, but the only way I could have stopped this is by never letting him run through the woods. Stuff is going to happen to dogs from time to time. But in Dorado’s case, the really appalling thing was that it was humans he trusted that let him down.
Oh well, what’s done is done, and I’m sure the people involved feel just awful about it.
If the standings are correct, it looks like Bob has decided to leave the Red Lantern for Christine. As of 10 am EDT, he’s already left Safety. She’s out of White Mountain.
You’re right about iditarod.com not seeming to be all that concerned about accuracy of the remaining racer’s standings. I notice that they’ve finally removed that very annoying ad for the Insiders that you had to close before you could see the standings. As far as they’re concerned, their money-makers are all in, so who cares?
The race has a lot of money flowing through it because it doesn’t actually pay for most of what is required to put it on. Almost everyone is a volunteer, and almost all of the facilities are donated. It wouldn’t bankrupt them to give something back to the communities that help them out. Putting up some dog sheds/barns in the villages would be a nice gesture. They could hold a barn raising in the summer. Hell, if they built them at the rural airports, there is probably Federal money available to help with the construction of a hangar-community center-dog drop.
The community will be arguing for years over who should have done what because it made them all look bad, like they didn’t care, and they do.
Yes, Bob has been running faster towards the end and Christine is fading. She has been holding that sled together for three-quarters of the race.