The ‘exciting’ last minute addition to the Iditarod/Facebook
Iditarod’s expeditionary excitement
An “even more exciting” version of the ‘Last Great Race’ left civilization Sunday on the 1,000-mile run north to Nome, or so says the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
No, we’re not talking about an Iditarod featuring a return to the battle of the sexes that boosted Iditarod to its peak of national attention in the 1980s when the late Susan Butcher, a four-time champ, regularly battled Rick Swenson, destined to become a five-time champ, and a large field of other men.
When you mentioned “Iditarod” to anyone in the Lower 48 in that period, they’d most likely answer with a question: “Isn’t that the race that some woman wins all the time?”
There are a couple of women in this year’s race capable of winning, but most of the pre-race attention has focused on defending champ Jesse ‘Moose Killer’ Holmes, and his 2022 moose executing escapade isn’t likely to sell well with dog lovers.
The battle of the sexes was way better, and Iditarod reached the zenith of its popularity in those days when Alaska Magazine (older readers will remember magazines) published an Iditarod issue with Butcher’s face on one cover and Swenson’s on the other so that readers could pick whoever they wanted to be on the face of the magazine.
Then, Butcher retired, and Swenson aged and the Iditarod glow faded a bit. But along came cocky Montanan Doug Swingley in 1995 to liven things up by becomng the first Outside musher ever to win Alaska’s biggest sporting event.
Some thought it a fluke that this poser from “Outside,” as Alaskans refer to all places other than Alaska, won the race, and then had the audacity to tell Alaskans that he believed he knew more about training dogs for long-distance sled dog races than they did.
Worse yet, he backed up the talk by dominating the race as the decade drew to an end, and suddenly Iditarod was all about Alaskans against that damn ‘Outsider.’ But Swingley came and went has had Swenson and Btucher.
Since then, well, there’s been reality TV star and alleged dog doper Dallas Seavey, and Seavey and Seavey and Seavey; Brent Sass, another reality TV star and self-confessed “bay boyfriend” accused of assaulting some former girlfriends,, and reality TV star Holmes, who prior to his vicory last year made headlines in Alaska mainly for killing moose and failing to control his sled dogs, which got loose in Wasilla and killed a poor, innocent, 15-pound Havanese in its owner’s yard while she watched in horror.
Give them all credit for doing their best to keep Iditarod in the public eye – if not always in a good way – as the national attention on the race shifted towards animal-rights issues and away from the great battle against the wilderness waged by dogs and dog drivers that led Tom Clarke, a London editor at the Daily Mail, to reckon that “this was the Last Great Race on Earth.”
The Mail subsequently dispatched reporter Ian Wooldridge into the wilds of Alaska to collect the stories that made that label stick.
A different race
And today?
Thanks to the “tail-dragger” or “sit sled,” mushers ride as much or more than they push, and if the trail turns to dirt, the Iditarod relocates the race start to Fairbanks so mushers don’t have to deal with that headache.
Iditarod then:
Iditarod now:
Suffice to say, the Iditarod today is a way different event than the originally proclaimed ‘Last Great Race,’ which started in Anchorage and resumed hours later at Knik – an old, old stop along the Iditarod National Historic Trail stretching from tidewater at Seward to Nome.
The race now begins with a for-show-only, ceremonial start in Anchorage before the real start a day later, approximately 70 miles up the George Parks Highway in Willow. This restart is nearly 75 miles from the historic Iditarod Trail, which the race finally joins in Skwentna.
It used to take Iditarod mushers with burly, thickly haired huskies a day or more to reach Skwentna after battling up and over some hills between Knik and the Susitna River and then winding their way through the tiaga forests and muskegs between the river and Skwentna.
Now they get to that community in eight or nine hours sitting on sleds pulled by thin-coated, houndish race dogs that traverse the frozen highways that are the Yentna and Susitna rivers in winter.
But that’s all history, and not the big news for this year intended to make the race “even more exciting.” And that news is, according to Iditarod’s Facebook page, that “we have another Expedition Musher joining the trail for Iditarod 54!
“Steve Curtis, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and adventurer, is set to join the inaugural Expedition Musher class for the 54th running of the Iditarod. 
Curtis is Canadian who runs an investment firm based in the Cayman Islands and is joining the race in name only. The newly minted “Expedition Mushers” travel with the race, but aren’t actually in the race. They’re on a tour.
All of this started with 66-year-old Norwegian billionaire Kjell Inge Røkke, who “pledged substantial philanthropic support” for Iditarod to the tune of more than $295,000 to be allowed to accompany the racers along the trail with the help of fellow Norwegian and 2020 Iditarod champ Thomas Waerner, plus a personal veterinarian and support personnel.
A one-time pal of the late Jeffrey Epstein, Røkke is reported to have a net worth of about $5.5 billion. How much Curtis is worth is unclear, but the Daily Hive – a Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada publication – in 2017 described him as “a high school dropout who built a $100 million business and beat terminal cancer.”
Whether Curtis is, like Røkke, ponying up substantial philanthropic support for Iditarod to be able to tag along with the race plus-Røkke has not been disclosed, but Iditarod did say this:
“As an Expedition Musher in The Last Great Race on Earth®, Curtis will take on the full trail – 1,000 miles–from Willow to Nome, Alaska, embracing the grit, teamwork, and respect for Alaska’s sled dog culture. He will be joined by Iditarod champion Jeff King (on snowmachine) and a seasoned team committed to safety, sportsmanship, and exceptional dog care. 
“As part of his participation, Curtis has personally committed $50,000 to support youth sports programs in villages along the Iditarod trail–honoring the communities whose spirit and resilience make the Last Great Race on Earth® possible for generations to come. 
“Bib #38 is officially on the roster – and Iditarod 54 just got even more exciting.”
How that $50,000 will be distributed among the more than 15 villages scattered along the trail has not been revealed. Whether the money will flow only to the villages on this year’s northern route or be shared with villages on the southern route and those along the now regularly used Fairbanks route was not disclosed.
Whether the Iditarod itself is getting paid by Curtis or is getting a cut of the $50,000 is an unknown. So, too, the question of who will determine the distribution of the money and how, and what defines a “youth sports program.”
The far and away biggest youth sports program in the villages is basketball, a sport supported by village schools. Public radio station KTOO in Fairbanks has described high school basketball as a “way of life” for communities within the vast, Yukon River drainage that spreads its tentacles through most of the Alaska Interior.
And although Curtis’s involvement with Iditarod, along with Røkke’s, has been cast as a rural-benefitting effort on the part of Iditarod, it looks more like part of a new Iditarod funding scheme based on two things: soliciting funds from wealthy individuals who want to claim a coveted Iditarod belt buckle and gambling.
Iditarod now runs a wide range of raffles and lotteries throughout the year. If you’re on the Iditarod e-mail list you will be swarmed with promotions for these throughout the year.
And if you’ve got a lot of cash to throw around, it’s abundantly clear that you can now buy your way onto the runners of an Iditarod dogsled without having to go to all the trouble to learn how to care for dogs along a wilderness trail – the biggest of Iditarod challenges – or really learn how to handle a dog sled.
A rookie Iditarod musher from Outside once compared the biggest Iditarod challenge to “spending two weeks tending to a bunch of babies.” The Iditarod would, without a doubt, be a lot more fun if you had a crew along to tend the babies; and all you had to do was ride the sled and go take a nap at every checkpoint.
Whether the expedition mushers and the gambling will keep afloat a race that has increasingly seen sponsors flee due to pressure from animal rights activists who think the pace of the dogs today asks too much for them remains to be seen.
In question, too, is the reception the dog drivers of old will give to the recruitment of fat-cat tourists posing as Iditarod mushers. Curtis, if he reaches Nome, will become only the fifth person able to claim success in reaching the summit of Mount Everest, the world’s tallest peak, and completing the Iditarod.
Cindy Abbott in 2010 became the first woman to accomplish that feat, despite suffering from Wegener’s granulomatosis, a severe and rare disease. A year later, she fell in love with sled dogs and now lives in Willow where the Iditarod stages its restart.
Her Iditarod bio reflects that “on March 3, 2013, Cindy started her first Iditarod. She made it 10 days before she had to scratch due to a broken pelvis. On March 2, 2014, Cindy started her second Iditarod. Unfortunately, Mother Nature made the race course unusually challenging. Cindy injured her shoulder and scratched at Rohn.
“On March 7, 2015, Cindy started her third Iditarod. After 13 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes, and 51 seconds, she crossed the finish line in Nome and received the Red Lantern Award,” the prize for finishing last in the race.
In 2019, in her last Iditarod before retiring, Abbott again collected that award despite finishing more than a day faster than in 2015. Her 2019 finishing time of 12 days, 2 hours, 57 minutes, 31 seconds was then the fastest Red Lantern time on record and faster than the finishing times of every Iditarod champion prior to 1985.
It’s hard to say exactly how Abbott might feel about Curtis joining the Everest-Iditarod club, but she did leave an interesting post on her Facebook page just days ago. Beneath a photo of one of those coveted Iditarod belt buckles, she wrote this:
There were more than a few veteran, Iditarod mushers among the 744 people liking that post. It would appear there is some rumbling in the Iditarod ranks about the race’s new direction, and the decision to award Iditarod belt buckles, no matter how they are cosmetically altered to reflect ”expedition” status, to dogsled riders escorted north on the trail.
Categories: Commentary, Outdoors
