February 1, 2003

Commander:
Rick Douglas Husband, Colonel, USAF

Pilot:
William C. McCool, Commander, USN

Payload Commander:
Michael P. Anderson, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Mission Specialist:
Kalpana Chawla, PhD
David M. Brown, MD, Captain, USN
Laurel Blair Salton Clark, MD, Captain, USN

Payload Specialist:
Ilan Ramon, Colonel, Israel Air Force

The race is starting today about an hour and a half after sunrise, which gives the first team out 5½ hours of light. The moon is a 6% crescent and will set at 8:44PM AKST, so it is all headlamp and the aurora at night. The temperature is back to seasonally cold, but there wasn’t much snow this year, and a lot of it was melted during the Chinook wind in January.

The teams leave with a three minute spacing between them, and that is equalized at the first mandatory 4-hour stop.

Update at 11:00PM CST (8:00PM AKST):

At Chena Hot Springs/Two Rivers
1 Hugh Neff (14)
2 Normand Casavant (1)
3 Jerry Joinson (4)
4 John Schandelmeier (17)
5 Dave Dalton (5)
6 Mike Ellis (7)
7 Brian Wilmshurst (9)
8 Hank DeBruin (18)
Beyond Fairbanks
9 Brent Sass (2)
10 Matt Hall (3)^R
11 Ken Anderson (6)
12 Allen Moore (8)
13 Cody Strathe (10)
14 Mandy Nauman (11)^R
15 Tony Angelo (12)^R
16 Torsten Kohnert (13)^R
17 Jean-Denis Britten (15)
18 Curt Perano (16)^R

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.

The Mushers in bold are former winners of the Yukon 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.