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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: April 2008

Snowmobiles hit dogs in All Alaska Sweepstakes and Iditarod

 

NOME--A hit-and-run snowmobiler at midnight on March 28, 2008 ended Lance Mackey's effort to become the first winner of the Triple Crown of Alaskan sled dog racing, severely injuring his already ailing stud dog Zorro, 9, injuring several other dogs less seriously, and wrecking his $3,000 sled.

Mackey, 38, was in third place, 20 miles from finishing the 408-mile All Alaska Sweepstakes, and had just passed a checkpoint at the town of Safety, he told Associated Press, when two snowmobiles overtook him. One of them plowed into his sled and team. "Three or four dogs were sucked underneath and Zorro," who was being carried, "was trapped in the sled bag," Mackey recounted. Mackey had Zorro flown first to Anchorage and then to Seattle for more advanced care than is available in Nome, and took the opportunity to plead for better traffic control along sled racing routes. "I almost got hit on the way into Nome during Iditarod and then was almost hit half an hour later," Mackey said. Zorro also failed to finish the 2007 Iditarod, but was the sire of most of Mackey's team.

The snowmobile collision came just 18 days after a snowmobile crashed into the team of Jennifer Freking, of Finland, during the Iditarod. The accident on the frozen Yukon River near Koyukuk killed a three-year-old dog named Lorne. The only other fatality during the Iditarod this year was a seven-year-old male dog belonging to rookie musher John Stetson, of Duluth, Minnesota. Stetson dropped out of the race after the dog died of pneumonia.

Mackey entered the All Alaska Sweepstakes after winning both the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail race from Anchorage to Nome and the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest from Fairbanks to Whitehorse, for the second consecutive year. No other musher has ever won both races in the same year--and the Yukon Quest victory was Mackey's fourth in a row.

But the 408-mile All Alaska Sweepstakes, from Nome to Candle and back, has only been run 12 times: annually from 1908 to 1917, as the first big-money dog sled race; in 1983, as a 75th anniversary revival; and in 2008. No one has ever before had a chance to win a Triple Crown, as the Yukon Quest was first held in 1984.

Five-time Iditarod winner Rick Swenson of Two Rivers won the 1983 All Alaska Sweepstakes, 10 hours behind the record time of 74 hours and 14 minutes set in 1910 by John "Iron Man" Johnson. Swenson, 55, has never entered the Yukon Quest, and did not enter the 2008 All Alaska Sweepstakes, but loaned some of his dogs to Sonny Lindner, 58, also of Two Rivers, who won the first Yukon Quest.

Johnson's record fell to 2004 Iditarod winner Mitch Seavey of Sterling, Alaska, who won the 2008 All Alaska Sweepstakes Race in 61 hours, 29 minutes and 45 seconds.

Leonard Seppala and his lead dog Togo won the All Alaska Sweepstakes in 1915, 1916, and 1917. Eight years later Togo, already ancient for a sled dog at 12, led Seppala's team 170 miles to meet the diptheria serum relay to Nome that inspired the Iditarod Trail race, begun in 1973. Togo then led the team 91 miles back toward Nome through a headwind, across the frozen and often treacherous Norton Sound.

That was by far the longest part of the relay, but Togo wasn't done. While Gunnar Kaasen and his lead dog Balto, 6, took the serum the rest of the way to Nome, Togo instigated Seppala's team in a mass break from harness in hot pursuit of a herd of reindeer.

Seppala soon recaptured most of the dogs, but Togo and another dog were lost in a blizzard and presumed dead until they trotted into Nome a week later and were photographed and feted as heroes. Togo lived to age 16, Balto to age 14, and Sye, the last of the serum run dogs, died at 17.

The 2008 All Alaska Sweepstakes revival became controversial when Rachel D'Oro of Associated Press revealed two days before the
start that, "Among the participants is Ramy Brooks, 39, a two-time Iditarod runner-up who was disqualified from the 2007 race for striking his dogs with a wooden trail marker. One of the Healy musher's dogs died the day after the incident, but a necropsy could not determine a cause of death."

Brooks was also barred from entering the 2008 Iditarod, but was not charged with any offense. The All Alaska Sweepstakes rules exclude anyone who has been convicted of animal abuse or neglect. As Brooks was not convicted, he could not be excluded.