Oh, Calcutta
At the Start Banquet on Thursday before the race, organizers sprang a new fundraising strategy on the unsuspecting mushers. When it was time to draw starting positions, organizers announced that they were holding a Calcutta. In essence, they wanted the audience, made up mostly of friends and families of the mushers, to bid on the mushers in two categories: first musher to Angel Creek and first musher to Whitehorse, with handicaps for rookies and veteran mushers who had not finished near the front of the pack in the past.
While I do applaud the Quest officials for trying to find creative ways to raise money, I think this event could have been handled differently.
First of all, no one knew it was coming. Second, it was too personal. The mushers were standing on a stage being bet on like they were a date package at a bachelor’s auction. It was especially hard on the rookies and the mushers who just wanted to finish, for whom finishing in the top 10 or even in the money isn’t an issue. No one was going to put money on an unknown. And, for a race in which a third of the mushers scratch every year, this is the wrong kind of pressure to put on mushers who are just trying to complete the 1,000 mile course.
Looking around at the expressions of other mushers at the banquet who realized that they would be “sold” in front of a couple hundred people, many of them loved ones, I wasn’t the only one to feel like this.
Nice try, but wrong venue.