The End Of Dreams

Mar 16, 2006 07:19 PM Filed in: Fun & Interesting
Iditarod Is Equal-Opportunity Destroyer

By Craig Medred
Anchorage Daily News
Published: March 16, 2006

Twelve days ago on Fourth Avenue in downtown Anchorage, the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race began amid crowds, fanfare and great expectations.

Five-time champ Rick Swenson of Two Rivers had a nice-looking dog team and hopes of bookending his storied Iditarod career by earning the distinction of being not only the youngest winner ever but also the oldest.

Four-time champ Martin Buser of Big Lake had what he thought was a perfectly matched team of huskies -- similar sizes, similar ages, similar gaits -- that would power him to a fifth victory like some sort of turbo-charged V-16 engine in front of the sled.

Two-time runner-up Ramy Brooks of Healy looked ready to film a NASCAR commercial. He had the best-turned-out team in Anchorage with a pit crew in shiny, new, red uniforms scurrying around his red Cellular One dog truck, readying the team he thought would finally, after 12 years of struggle, put him in the winner's circle.

On down the street, across from Rachael Scdoris's richly sponsored operation, was Richard Hum of Talkeetna, who'd arrived in an ancient, gray Chevrolet Suburban that looked like it had been salvaged from the Trapper Creek dump. When asked about its origins, his answer was, well, at least it ran.

Hum defined low-budget musher. Everything he owned looked to be secondhand. The only help he could afford was family. But he had dreams, and he was proud of those dogs. They'd come from Joe Garnie up Teller way, and there wasn't a musher in the Iditarod who doubted the toughness of Garnie dogs.

Garnie dogs, it should be remembered, pulled Libby Riddles through a Bering Sea storm in 1985 to become the first woman to win the Iditarod and thus vault this event from the wilds of Nowhere, Alaska onto the international stage.

Hum figured that with Garnie dogs, getting to Nome in his first Iditarod couldn't be all that difficult. He was planning a 12-day trip.

Then reality bit. For everybody.

Young or old, short or tall, rookie or seasoned veteran, there are few events better than the Iditarod at killing expectations, aspirations and, most of all, dreams.

Hum was the first to have them die. Six days and less than 400 miles from the race start, he called it quits in McGrath. He told race officials that he didn't think his young dogs were quite up to the task.

Around Alaska were people who could empathize -- 73-year-old David Aisenbrey of Montana Creek chief among them.

Aisenbrey holds title to what may be the Iditarod's most dubious achievement -- most scratches. Six times he started the race. Not once did he finish. He made it to Shaktoolik on the Bering Sea coast one year before his race fell apart. It was as close as he got.

By the time he finally gave up his Iditarod dream, Aisenbrey was an old guy with a bad back who thought he might still have a shot if the Iditarod would only allow him a helper along the trail as it had the legally blind Scdoris. That wasn't going to happen.

There have been more than a few like Aisenbrey over the years. Judy Merritt of Moose Pass started the race three times and never made it. A petite and good-spirited grandmother, she'd likely have done fine if Iditarod officials let her begin in McGrath on the north side of the Alaska Range.

But every Iditarod musher is required to battle through the mountains if they want to get to Nome. The mountains always beat Merritt and not just rhetorically either. Trees, rocks, stumps and more had a way of reaching up to smack her.

But then, that's what the Iditarod does -- it smacks people.

Swenson, Buser and Brooks all got smacked this year. When the race started, experts were picking all three to finish in the top 20 or better. It seemed a certainty at least one of them would be in the top 10. Over the past decade, at least one of them always has been in that group. And if one or two of them didn't make the top 10, they'd surely be in the top 20.

Had you predicted one of these mushers would fall out of the top 20, people would have looked at you strange. Had you predicted it would happen to all three, longtime Iditarod observers would have thought you were nuts.

After all, the worst Brooks had ever done was 17th as a rookie back in 1994. He was fifth last year.

As for Buser, he cut off his most of a finger with a table saw just before the 2005 race, had a doctor wrap it up, took off as the one-handed musher, and still managed to finish 13th. The holder of the Iditarod speed record has, admittedly, had some ups and down in the past six years, but he isn't some amateur on an Iditarod fling.

He has had 16 top-10 finishes, including four victories and the course record. He hasn't had a 25th-place finish -- which is what it looks like he'll get -- since he was a visiting dog-handler from Switzerland in 1986 running purebred Siberian huskies for the late Earl Norris.

That was, quite simply, a lifetime ago. He has since gotten married, fathered two boys who are now teenagers, won all those Iditarods and become a U.S. citizen.

Then there's Swenson.

If there's anyone you'd least expect to see running in the middle of the Iditarod, this is the guy: 30 Iditarods, five wins, 17 top-five finishes, 27 top-10 finishes and one scratch.

That one-and-only scratch came last year. Swenson pulled out because he thought his dogs had some sort of infection. He didn't want to jeopardize the future of what he thought was a superb race team.

That team was back this year. The dogs were ready to go. They were healthy. Swenson was confident, and who knows dogs better than Swenson.

So where were they Wednesday?

Into White Mountain in 28th -- three places behind Buser, three places in front of Brooks.

The spacing was about right, but customarily more like 1st, 4th and 7th places.

Who would have guessed this? Who can explain it?

Other than simply to observe that the Iditarod isn't exactly fair. The trail, the weather, the vagaries of dogs and dog health can stick it to almost anybody almost anytime.

Sometimes, you're just unlucky. The best observation in this regard might have come from someone who races the trail not with a dog team but with a snowmobile.

"You train just as hard to lose as to win, sometimes harder," said Iron Dog competitor Scott Davis.

Nowhere is this more true than in the Iditarod. Sometimes everything comes together, as it did for Jeff King this year, and you win. And sometimes everything falls apart, as it did for a whole bunch of other mushers, and you lose.

The only given is that the Iditarod will crush somebody's dream every year.