Mon, Mar 08, 2021 page10

• COVID-19: Pandemic forces route change for Iditarod race

  • AP, ANCHORAGE, Alaska
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  Traveling across the rugged, unforgiving and roadless Alaska terrain is already hard enough, but whatever comforts mushers previously had in the world’s most famous sled dog race would be cast aside this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

  In years past, mushers would stop in any number of 24 villages that serve as checkpoints, where they could get a hot meal, maybe a shower and sleep — albeit “cheek to jowl” — in a warm building before returning to the nearly 1,609km Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which was to start yesterday north of Anchorage.

  They would spend the next week or so mostly camping in tents outside towns, and the only source of warmth — for comfort or to heat up frozen food and water — will come from their camp cookers.

  

  Musher Aliy Zirkle runs her team during the ceremonial start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Anchorage, Alaska, on March 3, 2018.

  Photo: AP

  “It’s a little bit old school,” Iditarod CEO Rob Urbach said.

  This year’s Iditarod would be marked by pandemic precautions, a route change, no spectators, the smallest field of competitors in decades, the return of one former champion and the swan song of a fan favorite, all against the backdrop of pressure on the race and sponsors by an animal rights group.

  The most noticeable change this year would be no spectators. The fan-friendly ceremonial start in downtown Anchorage, which draws thousands of people, has been canceled, and the actual start in Willow, Alaska, of the race is being moved to a boat dock 11km out to help cut down on fans who would normally attend the race start just off a main highway.

  Urbach is encouraging fans to watch the race start and finish on TV or the Internet.

  The route has also been shortened to 1,384km. For the first time in the race’s 49-year history, the finish line would not be in Nome, Alaska.

  Instead, mushers would travel from Willow to the Alaskan mining ghost towns of Iditarod and Flat, and then back to Willow for the finish.

  This was the original vision of the race cofounder, the late Joe Redington, Urbach said.

  Howard Farley, 88, of Nome remembers that well. He disagreed with it in the early 1970s, when Redington proposed it, and he is against it now.

  He said he told Redington before the first Iditarod in 1973: “There’s nobody in Iditarod. It’s a ghost town. There’s nobody there to clap. I said, ‘Just bring it to Nome.’”

  The Iditarod could have easily and safely held the finish in Nome again this year, too, he said.

  “It just makes me sad that all of our work and all of our prayers down through the years have come to this,” Farley said.

  Since the mushers would have to double back to Willow for the finish, they would go over the Alaska Range twice.

  They would have to navigate the dangerous Dalzell Gorge and the Happy River Steps, or a series of steep switchbacks that routinely leave competitors bruised and sleds broken.

  In an effort to prevent the spread of the virus, the Iditarod would skip most of the communities to help prevent any transmission, leaving mushers to sleep in tents specially made for Alaska’s tough weather or under the stars in temperatures that could be well below zero.

  Urbach has had challenges at every turn as he tries to pull off the second Iditarod during the pandemic.

  The virus took its hold on the US in the middle of last year’s race, one of the few major sporting events not to be canceled in March last year, when they learned to deal with the pandemic on the fly.

  This year, they have had more time to prepare.

  Mushers are to undergo vigorous COVID-19 testing and monitoring, before and during the race, with plans to withdraw and isolate any who test positive.

  Champion Thomas Waerner is not in the race, saying that “it is impossible to plan ahead” during the pandemic.

  Last year, he and his dogs were stranded in Alaska for months because of travel restrictions after his win.

  They only made it home to Norway after hitching a ride on an airplane that was being flown from Anchorage to its new home at a museum in Oslo.

  The race is to start with 47 mushers, the smallest field in decades.

  This year’s field includes four former champions, including two four-time winners, Martin Buser and Dallas Seavey.

  Buser last won in 2002; Seavey collected his four titles over a five-year span, ending with his last championship in 2016.

  Seavey last raced the Iditarod when he came in second in 2017, when Iditarod officials said that four of his dogs tested positive for a banned opioid painkiller.

  He adamantly denied giving his dogs the painkillers. The next year, the Iditarod reversed its decision and cleared Seavey, but he took his dogs to Norway to race instead.

  While Seavey returns, one of the sport’s most-liked mushers is bowing out after this year’s race.

  Aliy Zirkle, 50, announced on her Web site last month that it was time to retire.

  Zirkle has finished in the top 10 seven times since 2002, and finished second three years in a row starting in 2012. She has never won.
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