Iditablog.com – Iditarod 2012 News & Coverage

By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – John Baker won the storied Iditarod Sled Dog Race on Tuesday in record time, becoming the first Alaska Native champion since 1976.

Baker shattered the course record by nearly three hours, finishing the 1,100-mile race in eight days, 19 hours and 46 minutes. The previous record was set in 2002 by four-time champion Martin Buser.

Driving a team of 10 dogs, Baker sledded along snow-covered Front Street in Nome, Alaska, as he approached the finish line, under a polished burl, or knotted wooden, arch.

He was greeted by drummers and dancers from his Inupiat tribe, and a large crowd of relatives and supporters from his home town of Kotzebue, which is about 180 miles north of Nome.

“Running a team like this, there’s nothing better,” Baker said at the finish. “This is the way life is supposed to be.”

The Iditarod commemorates the 1925 rescue mission that delivered diphtheria medicine to Nome by sled-dog relay.

Baker, the first Alaska Native to win the competition since 1976, was the first ever Inupiat champion of the race.

The Inupiat are the Eskimo people of Alaska’s northern and northwestern coast. Their language is distinct from that of the Yupik people, who are from the more southerly parts of western Alaska. They have common traditions based on whaling and other subsistence food-gathering activities.

Among those celebrating Baker’s win was Denise Michels, the first Inupiat to be elected mayor of Nome.

“I’ve waited eight years to tell you this,” she said, after hugging Baker. “On behalf of the city of Nome, congratulations on coming to the burled arch first.”

At the finish line, Baker received an oversized check for $50,400, keys to a new truck and floral wreaths for his lead dogs. The new champion said he did not realize he was on a record pace until the final hours of the race.

“I didn’t have any thoughts about breaking the record. That dawned on me last night or early this morning,” he said. “Breaking the record was certainly the icing on the cake.”

Baker, 48, is a commercial pilot who flies small planes between rural villages in northwestern Alaska, an area that lacks road links. His home of Kotzebue, a mostly Inupiat city of about 3,200, lies above the Arctic Circle.

Baker is one of the few Iditarod champions who lives in a truly rural part of the state. Most top mushers live along the roads north of Anchorage or in the Fairbanks area, with easy access to supplies, business partners and corporate sponsors.

He has been a consistent top-10 finisher over the past several years and has placed as high as third in the past.

Past Native Iditarod champions have been Athabascan Indians from interior Alaska.

The Iditarod began on March 5 with a ceremonial, untimed run in Anchorage. Sixty-two mushers and their dog teams began the race. As of early Tuesday, 11 had dropped out.

(Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Greg McCune)

The webcast will open a little over an hour from now, as the finisher gets closer to Nome – around 8:45 AKDT.

Call the comment-line at: 253-778-6874 and leave us a message and share who you were rooting for during this years race, and why.

Our video feed will come from several streaming webcams on front street and after the Iditablog “pre-game show”, live audio will come from our partners in Nome, directly from the burled arch itself as you hear history being made with the play-by-play of the winning musher crossing the finish line of Iditarod 39.

As John Baker, and Ramey Smyth get their eight hour rest in White Mountain, its time for you to start making plans to join us tomorrow for the live, finish-line webcast.  We’ll announce on twitter & facebook the broadcast times once we have a better idea of when the first musher will arrive outside Nome.  Right now the rough estimate for the finish is 9:30-10:30am Alaska Time.

Our video feed will come from several streaming webcams on front street and after the Iditablog “pre-game show”, live audio will come directly from the burled arch itself as you hear history being made with the play-by-play of the winning musher crossing the finish line of Iditarod 39.

Here are some stats to ruminate on until we know who wins:

Comparing Baker & Smyth over the last 9 years:

• In 9 years John Baker’s average time from White Mountain to Nome was 10hours 35minutes
• In the same period Ramey Smyth’s average time from White Mountain to Nome was 9hours 12minutes
• In the last 9 years, in any given race Baker has never beat Smyth’s time between WMO and Nome
• However, in 7 out of those 9 years while Smyth might be faster on the run from WMO to OME – Baker has placed higher

• Last year, in 2010 John Baker placed 5th in the Iditarod, beating a 6th place Ramey Smyth by 40 minutes
• Ramey left White Mountain an hour and fourteen minutes after Baker did, cutting Bakers lead by 34 minutes by the time they had each arrived to Nome.
• This year Ramey will need to make up 51 minutes if he wants to beat Baker

Our play-by-play announcer's view of the Finish Line

With John Baker flying through Elim this morning before 9:00am and Ramey Smyth rapidly gaining on him, things don’t look to be slowing down anytime soon as there are only 46 miles between Elim and the 8-hour mandatory rest in White Mountain.  Baker and Smyth are on pace to shatter the fastest race record set in 2002 by Martin Buser in which he finished in 8days, 22hours, 46minues, and 2 seconds.  Last year, in 2010 Lance Mackey’s winning time was the second fastest race at only an hour and fourteen minutes off from Busers record.  When Lance Mackey went through Elim in 2010 it wasn’t until after 1pm – a whole 4 hours later than when Baker checked in today… which means it’s possible that Baker (or Smyth) could beat the 2002 fastest race record by 2-3 hours or so.

We’re probably looking at late morning, or early afternoon finish tomorrow – but who it will be still remains to be seen!

Iditablog will be live streaming with video from the finish tomorrow.  We will announce a specific time once the first musher gets close to Safety, but for the most part you can plan that we will begin broadcasting an hour before the projected finish.

Johnny Baker is in and out of Elim. That is the last strategic move he can make. It looks like Ramey is slowing down. If I was John I would not rest comfortably with Ramey that close – he is always a threat – but if he really is slowing down he won’t catch John. I think Hans is a little slower than John also – watch Hans, he might blow through Elim also. I think that is why he rested longer, but I think that unless John slows down it is his race to lose. I think Hans will pass Ramey before White Mountain – the question is how long they rest in Elim. Watch Elim to White Mountain run times to tell the tale. John is in great position to get to White Mountain before the heat of the day, rest 8 hours and leave.

I look for Hugh to drop in the standings – I think he over ran his team and they are slowing. I bet Dallas passes him, and maybe Sebastian, to move into the top 5.

Sven Haltman is having a good race – I look for him to move into the top 10. Watch Pete Kaiser, Aliy Zirkle, Michael Williams Jr, and Ken Anderson too. Their run times from Unalakleet to Shaktoolik show strong running teams.

It may be John Baker’s race to lose, but it is far from over.

Eric

We are in the midst of watching John Baker, Hans Gatt, and Ramy Smyth’s careful movements as Baker’s once impressive lead of 20 miles turn into less than four. While most Iditarod champions have the race buttoned up by this point, we could be seeing one of the furthest lead changes in recent Iditarod history. Iditarod veteran Eric Rogers takes a look below at what type of general strategies build leads and what elements of a mushers race can take those leads away. Enjoy! -Josh

The Iditarod has been described as a chess match where all the players move at once and you can only see your pieces. It is subtle, nuanced, and incredibly complex. But given that there are a few basic principles that apply.

First you are only as fast as your slowest dog. An example of that was the 1996 Iditarod in Kaltag where Jeff King dropped a dog because he worked too hard. Sounds crazy, but because that dog worked so hard he needed extra rest. Jeff couldn’t convince him to ease off. When the rest of the team was ready to leave Kaltag, this dog was still resting. So Jeff left him behind. That was one of many decisions that contributed to Jeff’s win that year.

Dropping a dog can help the team go faster. The more dogs in the team the more power you have. In bad trail conditions and/or hills that might equate to speed. But on a hard fast level trail, once you reach a minimum number to pull the sled (maybe 6 to 8 dogs), it doesn’t make any difference.

Second, if you over run your dogs, they will slow down. Then they will not recover their earlier speed during that race. During training, each dog team negotiates among themselves to come up with a preferred traveling pace. Something they are comfortable with and that leaves them some reserves after the long runs the musher puts on them in training. Frequently the musher slows them down even more. The faster you run the harder it is on the body and the longer a rest you need to recover and maintain that speed.

If you run the dogs further than they are trained for, this negotiated speed is a too fast. Then the dogs need extra rest to recover. If you cut their rest too to keep up with another team, they don’t have the reserves they need to maintain that negotiated speed and they slow down. Take them over that edge and extra rest at the next stop, even your 24 hour rest, will not be enough to get that original speed back. One of the first signs a musher will see is dogs that lose some of their appetite. A team where all the dogs eat like wolves is feeling good and ready to keep racing.

Every competitive musher walks a knife edge in his run rest cycle. Give the dogs more rest than they need and you leave time on the table (you could have finished faster). Don’t give them as much rest as they need and you slow down and are no longer competitive.
This brings us to the third strategy of the race. The strong teams will try to draw the slightly weaker teams into keeping up with them and blowing up their dog team. That means driving them hard enough they lose that original speed they had. Then the other team is no longer a threat.
Of course the other side of that is that you might have misjudged your team and will blow them up in the effort. It is kind of like a game of “chicken” crossed with “catch me if you can”. If you have a strong team that you have run conservatively (not too fast or long and a little extra rest), that is eating well and feeling righteous, you can cut corners (rest), pull off long runs (if you’ve trained for that), and dare the other teams to try to follow you. For each musher, knowing how fast to run, how long to run at that speed, and how long to rest your particular dog team after that run is the crux of the problem. Each team is different. Of course the strengths of the musher play into this also. Optimizing the run/rest strategy and keeping it optimized as conditions (weather, dogs health, mushers health, trail surface, etc.) change is one of the real challenges mushers face on the Iditarod Trail.
Keep ‘em Northbound

John Baker arrived first to the gold coast village of Unalakleet this morning. Along with taking home $2,500 in gold nuggets from Wells Fargo, by arriving first to the Bering Sea Baker also claims a very strong chance at winning this year’s Iditarod. As we mentioned on the podcast last night, many – but not all of the mushers to arrive first into Unalakleet have gone on to win the entire race. Things really got interesting though when you look at the statics for the next checkpoint, Shaktoolik. The online race archives go back to 2001, 10 years ago – and what they show is a solid trend where every musher to reach Shaktoolik first in the last 10 years has gone on to win the Iditarod. Historically, if a team is going to arrive to Unalakleet first but not win the race, it’s because someone else who arrived after they did, left earlier and took the lead. With a decent head start on the trail to Shaktoolik this morning, Baker increased his chances of becoming an Iditarod Champion for the first time.

While history is a good indicator, Baker is far from guaranteed a victory in Nome. Ramey Smyth, who arrived to Unalakleet 2.5 hours after Baker, is well known for being able to bust out some fast runs, especially on the coast where he has claimed the “Fastest time from Safety to Nome” award several times. If anyone can catch Baker, its Ramey. Looking at run times for the last few checkpoints, Smyth was slightly faster than Baker on the 90 mile trip into Unalakleet and had the best out of the top 5 who are in so far. From Eagle Island to Kaltag, which is 70 miles, Smyth had the best time out of the entire top 15, and managed to shave an hour off of Baker’s lead, however Smyth took a longer rest at the checkpoint than Baker did, coming up neutral.

That need to rest more after faster runs is what will make it tough for Ramey to make up those outstanding 2+ hours between him and Baker, but if he can do it; continue to run faster while also cutting his rest time a little bit, there is a good chance we will see an upset on the coast and buck the trend from the last 10+ years.

Let’s also not forget to look at Hans Gatt and Sebastian Schnuelle who arrived into Unalakleet 3, and 3.5 hours behind Baker respectively. It is still possible that one of them could make a daring move or two that would decrease the lead that Baker is currently holding steady. One of the ways to do that would be for Smyth, Gatt, or Schnuelle to leave Unalakleet having taken a shorter rest than Baker, but at 4 hours Baker had already cut his rest down pretty good for someone who most likely did not camp on the trail from Kaltag… it was one of the shortest I could find at the speed he came in at. There is a small possibility that he plans on resting some more on the way to Shaktoolik, there is a new shelter cabin about half way.

The map below (put together by Iditablog’s resident Iditarod veteran, Eric Rogers) shows some of the options that teams have for resting between both Kaltag and Unalakleet, and then Unalakleet and Shaktoolik.  Both “tripod flats” and “Old Woman Cabin” have been popular in the past for teams all along the race to rest at before hitting the coast.

click to enlarge

The Famous "Old Woman Cabin" between Kaltag & Unalakleet

John Baker is leading Iditarod 2011 so far – how did he get there? We break down the race over the last few days, while also looking ahead to the impending arrival at Unalakleet. We also spoke with KICY’s Lon Swanson about one of the biggest cultural events for Western Alaska that happened today along the Iditarod Trail. All that and lots more.

P.S. Not quite sure where Podcast #7 went to – it was a good one… I’ll try and re-post it soon.

Feel free to email us with topics or questions you’d like to hear us discuss on the next episode… the email address is: podcast@iditablog.com, send us a twitter/facebook message or call the voicemail box at 253-778-MUSH.

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