Tale of two races
Sunday’s storm on Eagle Summit highlighted a perennial issue on the Yukon Quest trail. Although everyone is entered in the same race, on the same trail with the same rules, they are often competing in two different contests.
First are the front-runners, the mushers who are going for the victory and the purse. These men and women are world-class mushers and athletes. And, although the Quest is relatively unknown outside mushing circles, compared with the Iditarod, anyway, winning the what is often billed as the toughest race in the world is a notable feat.
Then there is most of the rest of the field, which is just aiming to cross the finish line. For the majority of these mushers, money isn’t the object, although that can be said for just about everyone in the Quest.
This year, the storm put a clear dividing line between the front pack and the rest of the field, not to mention the fact that it knocked nearly a third of the mushers out of the race entirely. While mushers in the back of the pack were facing life-threatening conditions that prompted a major rescue effort, the front six or eight mushers were still heading down the trail to Whitehorse with their eye on the big prize. It was jarring juxtaposition on the Quest Web site.
One of the reasons I wanted to write this blog was because I knew Rod was going to be running toward the back of the pack, which generally gets overlooked in media reports because all eyes are focused on the horse race. A friend of ours, Brian O’Donoghue deplores the focus on the front-runners. He says the slower mushers often have better stories to tell because they’re out on the trail, in the elements sometimes for days after the winner has crossed the finish line, taken a long hot shower and had a long sleep in a warm bed. Brian would know. He’s the only musher to have won the Red Lantern given to the last-finishing musher in both the Quest and the Iditarod.
As of tonight, the Quest field is down to 13 mushers, from a starting group of 22. Healy musher Regina Wycoff is a good 20 hours behind the next-to-the-last musher. She made it over the summit in the storm. When she finishes the race, and hopefully she’ll make it to Whitehorse, she’ll have some tales from the trail that I want to hear.