Kjetil Backen of Norway tried to snatch the lead from Mitch Seavey in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race with both racers leaving the Koyuk checkpoint seconds apart.
While it appeared that Backen got a few seconds' jump on Seavey, race officials had both teams leaving at 2:18pm Monday. Backen, third coming into Koyuk, spent only three hours in the checkpoint resting his team. Seavey rested his team for five hours.
Three-time Iditarod winner Jeff King, second into Koyuk at 11:07am, remained in the checkpoint, resting.
A couple of hours earlier, King, looking relaxed, ate lasagna and wild blueberries and ice cream from vacuum-sealed food packs, while assessing his chances of getting first to Nome in one of the closest Iditarods in years.
In King's way was Seavey, who has never won the 1,770km race from Anchorage to Nome.
Seavey, of Seward, looked about as stressed as King did relaxed at this checkpoint, just 198km from the finish line.
"He is very impressive," King said of Seavey. "He is going faster ... If you've got speed and the lead, it will be tough to beat."
Seavey is running in his 11th Iditarod. His best finish was fourth in 1998. He arrived first into Koyuk at 9:17am.
"I'm just so impressed with my dog team," Seavey told KNOM radio Sunday in Unalakleet. "I can hardly believe it. The things that I've asked them to do here, they just keep performing and performing."
King followed Seavey into Kaltag about 90 minutes later.
From Shaktoolik, the 77km of trail bears north, covering several kilometers of land before touching on Norton Bay. The terrain here is mostly gentle swells. Closer to Koyuk, the ice is often rough.
From Koyuk, teams head along the coast and sea ice to Elim 77km away and just 152km from Nome.
Backen had been leading until one of his dogs collapsed and died Sunday near the Unalakleet checkpoint. He arrived in Koyuk about a half-hour after King. Charlie Boulding, a favorite with people in Koyuk, arrived 20 minutes after Backen.
King said Backen might not be able to bounce back.
"I think his heart is broke," King said.
Backen is running nearly the same team as the one fellow Norwegian Robert Sorlie used to win the 2003 Iditarod. The dog that died, called "Takk," which means thank you in Norwegian, helped lead Sorlie across the finish line last year.
"I race, but I'm not quite same. My feelings go up and down," Backen said while repacking his sled. "We have to keep living. We have to go on. ... It's hard."
Preliminary findings of a necropsy indicate the 7-year-old male died of blood loss associated with gastric ulcers.
About a dozen adults and children crowded around Boulding's sled after he arrived in Koyuk at 11:59am Boulding often visits with people in this village of about 300 when he's doing his training runs.
"Hey Charlie, you're doing very good," said Lola Hannoy while giving him a big hug.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier