Date: July 26, 2006 at 12:31 pm
Butcher battles marrow rejection
KASILOF, Alaska — Susan Butcher’s long road to recovery from leukemia has hit a roadblock, forcing the weakened, four-time Iditarod champion into a fierce, secondary battle if she is to once again assume her role as mother to daughters Tekla and Chisana.
Butcher’s toughness and resolve is legendary. But this time, it isn’t fierce winds and cold on the home stretch to Nome, nor is she battling the slopes of Mt. McKinley. According to the Web diary of her husband, David Monson, Butcher is fighting to hold down food and to be able to move her limbs as she lies in a bed at a Seattle hospital famed for its cancer treatment. An article by Jeff Richardson that ran July 23 in Butcher’s hometown newspaper, the “Fairbanks Daily News-Miner,” summed up her fight within a fight. The battle now is with Graft Versus Host Disease:
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Date: July 20, 2006 at 4:39 pm
DeNure trains for rookie Iditarod run
KASILOF, Alaska — Some people toil with their dogs in obscurity for years before becoming a palpable part of the distance mushing community, while others seemingly have a gift of showing up and effortlessly emerging as a fixture, a mover and a shaker. Zoya DeNure is one such musher.
Since the former runway model and music promoter’s first introduction to sled dogs back in Wisconsin six years ago, DeNure has moved to Alaska, found herself in a relationship with one of the most respected distance drivers in the state, established a women’s race on her home trails near Paxson and, now, stands at the cusp of running her first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. DeNure, 29, and her partner, John Schandelmeier, have carved a niche in the sport by rescuing rejects – Alaskan huskies from the animal shelter – and turning them into competitive athletes. She finished the 2006 Chantanika 200 in second place and has competed in several mid-distance races, placing in the top five of the field over the past three years.
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Date: July 20, 2006 at 12:52 pm
KASILOF, Alaska – Dodo Perri, 48, a longtime musher in Italy and veteran of the 2005 Iditarod, died July 14 in a diving accident in the Isle of Ponza harbor in the Tirrenean Sea near Rome. Perri was living on the Isle of Ponza with his girlfriend, Maria Rita Menichelli, who owns a store there. He was a part-time fisherman, and on Friday afternoon, he was busy trying to recover a lure made to look like a colorful metal fish. It’s used for catching cattle fish. He had lost the lure the evening before while returning to dock his boat. While diving to get the lure, he hit his head on a boat propeller, which caused massive head injuries. A boat driver got him out of the water almost immediately and administered first aid, but he was too badly injured to survive.
Perri was a veteran of sled dog sports, having won the Italian Sled Dog Championship and run in eight Alpirods, an international sled dog race that spanned Italian, French and Austrian Alps. And he had fought tooth and nail to raise money to run his first Iditarod. Finishing 52nd, Perri described his rookie Iditarod as “good,” despite wallowing through deep snow, ruts and open water that plagued the race that year. “The whole thing, I like,” he said, describing the run with a mountaineer’s language as “very technical up to Rohn.”
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Date: July 11, 2006 at 12:58 pm
KASILOF, Alaska – Ed Iten barely had a chance to nap after his third major race of the winter, and he was in a reflective mood. His voice thick with sleep, he ruminated on the season gone by. Having compiled close to 2,000 miles in races alone in 2006, he still scratched his head over one of the fundamentals of the sport: his feeding routine.
“Y’know, I’m still trying to figure that out,” he said groggily just after finishing second by 16 minutes to a blazing-hot Lance Mackey in this year’s Kobuk 440. “Some mushers are pretty comfortable with it, but if I’m dealing with anything, it’s the mystery of feeding.”
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Date: June 24, 2006 at 1:41 pm
King, other multi-champs plan on making it a race in 2007
KASILOF, Alaska – It really doesn’t matter what your bib number is - starting positions don’t make or break the Iditarod - but that fact sure didn’t prevent 59 dog mushers from signing up at the earliest opportunity for the 35th running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
The race attracts about 100 entries by late fall, and about 85 of those teams make the start. Among the competitors planning to race in 2007 were the usual past champions, including the 2006 winner and four-time champ Jeff King. On hand for the signup festivities was virtually every musher who made 2006 so fascinating. They included Doug Swingley, Mitch Seavey, Paul Gebhardt, Martin Buser, Ramy Brooks, John Baker, Ed Iten, Aliy Zirkle and Jason Barron, among others. Rick Swenson signed up as well.
About 25 of the mushers spent at least one night sacked out in tents, cars and campers at the race’s headquarters in Wasilla; some, like Lance Mackey of Kasilof, camped in the parking lot for about 10 days. The big draw was the race’s first-come, first-served rule that allows mushers to pick starting positions based on the order they sign up. Mackey was first in line, so he’ll undoubtedly choose bib number 13, the same number his father, Dick, and brother, Rick, wore when each of them won the Iditarod on their sixth try. This will be Lance’s sixth race.
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Date: June 5, 2006 at 1:53 pm
Dream Harley in hand, he’s aiming at a dream race and a dream home
KASILOF, Alaska – Lance Mackey has three simple desires: win the Iditarod, live in a log house and ride around on a Harley Davidson motorcycle. One of the three became a reality this summer, and the other two are tantalizingly within reach of Mackey’s nine-fingered grasp. The first goal to be checked off the list of the lanky, down-to-earth dog musher has two wheels, sleek curves and the dirty rumble that comes only from a Harley.
He bought his dream hog, a Sportster with zero miles, this spring and had the odometer up to 1,000 miles by the end of May.
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Date: February 15, 2006 at 5:34 pm
Injuries starting to pile up, and the racing season hasn’t begun
KASILOF, Alaska, Nov. 15, 2006 — Jason Mackey sat in the passenger seat of Bruce Linton’s dog truck and had a chance to fling the door open and jump as the heavy vehicle slid toward a steep bluff, but he didn’t bail, mainly because they were going so slow and he figured the truck would stop. It didn’t.
Like a bad dream, the wreck unfolded in slow motion on the sharp, icy right button-hook turn around the lip of a steep gully down to Coyote Creek. Locals call the spot “Deadman’s Curve.” The two dog mushers on their way to the only useable snow in the region were packing 20 dogs, two sleds and supplies for a short training run. Linton turned the wheel but the truck kept sliding toward the lip of the canyon until the truck tilted left over the edge and began a series of cartwheels, flinging and crushing the sleds, smashing the wooden dog box built on the truck’s frame and imploding the cab against the two men.
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