NOME, Alaska — The top three in this year’s Iditarod were relative underdogs, mushers who don’t run the biggest, most elaborate kennels. It was Lance Mackey, Paul Gebhardt and Zack Steer to win, place and show.
“Score one for the dirty jackets this year,” an exhausted Steer said with a laugh after crossing the finish line at 3:46 a.m. Indeed, Steer’s bright yellow parka was stained brown from 10 days of dirt and greasy dog food.
Mackey runs on a shoestring budget, Gebhardt has a medium-sized kennel that he largely runs alone with minimal handler help, and Steer shares his kennel with Robert Bundtzen, an Anchorage doctor. Of the three, Steer is almost a part-timer, a fiercely competitive musher but one who enters only every two or three years.
Obviously, Gebhardt has been here before. This is his second time as runner-up, and he finished third last year. But not too many people predicted Mackey, and especially Steer, would soar into the first and third spots.
Halfway through this year’s Iditarod, Steer told me he may not be back next year. He has a family with two small children and a lodge to run, he said. But at the finish line, he talked about having his young team back in the race in 2008. Obviously, he has plenty of time to talk it over with his family and supporters.
While Mackey said he didn’t have much of a game plan coming into this race, instead relying on his gifted ability to respond to whatever situation he’s in, Steer entered the Iditarod with a definite game plan. And he stuck to it. It goes to show that there’s more than one way to run an Iditarod.
Steer knew he had speed, and his mission was to keep that speed. So he kept his trail time to about six hours much of the way, well within his dogs’ capability. He had also put thousands of miles on them in training, so the dogs were in very good shape coming into the Iditarod. Still, he had come into the race expecting a top 20 finish, hoping for a top 10 finish and thinking of a top five finish as a slim chance. “This was beyond my expectations,” he said at the finish line.
Steer said he’d reached Unalakleet as the race started heating up, and made the assumption that Mackey and Gebhardt might be catchable. He figured Jeff King and Martin Buser were racing to win, and were out of reach. But when he looked at run times, he saw that it was the other way around. And the patient tactician began to slowly whittle into their leads.
King would pull up and rest longer both at Koyuk and Elim, which allowed Steer to pass. Steer and Buser would race to the finish line, separated by only 20 minutes leaving White Mountain. The pass was uneventful, Steer said. The trail was unusually gravelly and rough, shredding mushers’ plastic runners. Steer came upon Buser when the four-time champion had his sled on its side, swapping out a new set of plastic.
Steer said it was a NASCAR moment. Buser had pulled over to swap out fresh plastic so his sled would glide faster, while Steer opted to keep his “old rubber” on all the way. Steer’s approach paid off, and he maintained a lead of several minutes the rest of the way into Nome.
Buser bounces back into top five
Buser pulled in a few minutes later, happy to be fourth and saying he learned a lot. “The list of what to do next year is so long, I’d better go somewhere and write it down,” he said. That list includes ideas on how to train the dogs better for all kinds of conditions.
Buser unhooked his 10-dog team led by Caribou and Quebec, allowing all the dogs to mill around in the finish chute. Buser does that after every race, and it’s a great way to let the dogs know they’re done with the task.
He was plainly happy with his team, and had to be glad to be in the hunt all the way this year. Buser led the way most of this year, rocketing to the front with blistering speed for the first two-thirds of the race. It’s been his style since he started winning in the early 1990s.
He managed the fourth-place run despite a continuous string of setbacks, from a gangline that broke twice before he ditched it entirely at Anvik, to a dog in heat who perpetually distracted his males, to some bangs and bruises from hitting the exposed tundra in this low-snow race. His finish is also a big bounce over last year, when he fell to 23rd place.
King reflective, happy with fifth
King, too, was relaxed and jovial when he crossed under the burled arch in fifth place, two hours behind Buser at 6:05 a.m. King said his team lacked some of the spark that it had a year ago, when he won his fourth Iditarod. He thought the frigid race temperatures and constant wind may have played a role in that. “Maybe I didn’t train enough in those conditions,” King said, echoing the thoughts of Buser. Then, King added, you can’t train for everything and you can’t control what Mother Nature throws at you.
King said he’d had his eye on Mackey ever since Mackey passed him on the way to Rohn. “He passed me on a one-runner sled,” King said, referring to Mackey’s ability to not only hang on with a broken sled, but post some of the fastest run times despite the damage. But then, he added, “I’ve never seen him not have a nice team.”
A reporter asked King if he would consider running the Yukon Quest in addition to the Iditarod after the formula worked for Mackey this year. King plainly had already given the idea some thought. King has run it before. “Yes, I can imagine wanting to run the Quest some day, but I’m not sure I’m up to driving my team both races in a row,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like much fun.”
King won the 1989 Quest. Does that mean he’d consider having another musher run his dogs in the Quest? Or that he’d like to run it again himself, rather than race in the Iditarod? He didn’t say.
King then said he’d gotten sweaty on the run over the Topkok Hills from White Mountain, then chilled when he dropped back onto the flats leading into Nome. He said he was looking forward to a hot shower, a hot meal and a warm bed.