Historic Alaska Sled Dog Race Revived

A century after the birth of long-distance sled dog racing, 16 mushers are set to retrace a historic run in western Alaska and compete for a $100,000 winner-take-all purse.

The All Alaska Sweepstakes begins Wednesday, launching a 408-mile round trip from Nome, an old gold rush town best known as the finish line of the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race held earlier this month.

In a departure from that famous race, however, the lucrative sweepstakes is allowing the participation of an Iditarod musher serving a two-year suspension for abusing his dogs. It also carries some rules left over from the past, including a ban on dropping tired or injured dogs along a route that crosses mountainous terrain marked by punishing wind and subzero temperatures.

''This is about who has the best team, not who is the best musher,'' said race director Phil Schobert. ''There's intentionally a lot of challenge in it so the mushers have to take a lot of care for their dogs. This race is 100 percent about the dogs.''

The run to the old mining settlement of Candle and back commemorates the 100th anniversary of the original race and takes place 25 years after the last sweepstakes was held. Holding to the frontier theme, mushers had to pay part of the entry fee with an ounce of gold. Another antique touch: race judges will not declare a winner until 24 hours after the first teams return to Nome's Front Street, giving mushers time to lodge any complaints they want. There are no limits, either, to the number of dogs on a team.

''It was a kick,'' Chugiak musher Jim Lanier said of the 1983 sweepstakes. ''When I heard they were bringing it back, I signed up immediately.''

Among the other participants is Ramy Brooks, a two-time Iditarod runner-up who was disqualified from the 2007 race for striking his dogs with a wooden trail marker. One of the Healy musher's dogs died the day after the incident, but a necropsy could not determine a cause of death.

Brooks did not respond to requests by The Associated Press to comment on his participation in the sweepstakes. But organizers said anyone convicted of animal abuse or neglect would not be allowed to enter under race rules. Brooks does not fall into that category, said assistant race director Lisa Schobert, Phil's wife.

''He was reprimanded, spanked, but was never legally convicted of anything,'' she said. ''With Ramy coming out on this race, you can bet everyone will be watching him. You can bet he won't be doing anything wrong.''

Three Iditarod champions also are among the competitors lured by the largest cash prize for a sled dog race in Alaska (the Iditarod pays $69,000 to the winner). They include Fairbanks musher Lance Mackey, a 37-year-old cancer survivor who just won his second consecutive Iditarod, three weeks after his fourth consecutive win in the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race. Also competing is four-time Iditarod winner Jeff King of Denali Park, who ran a close match with Mackey in this year's race, finishing second.

Mackey, the only musher to win the back-to-back races, is seeking an unprecedented triple crown with the sweepstakes. But he has reservations about a sweepstakes rule requiring mushers to sign over their dog ownership rights to the Nome Kennel Club — the organizer of the current and past races — while on the trail. Essentially, mushers unable or unwilling to abide by race rules face the choice of either withdrawing from the sweepstakes or forfeiture of their teams.

Mackey said he appreciates the rule's goal of fair and humane competition. But he's put off by its all-or-nothing aspect.

''That's about the only thing I disagree with,'' he said. ''It's kind of weird. It gives them full control of how you're running.''

Another rule forbids official dog drops. The intention is to ensure mushers will select only the strongest, healthiest dogs, leaving behind iffy animals that might be dropped in other races. As far as King is concerned, the restriction means participants will have to drive their teams to accommodate the weaker dogs, not the other way around.

''It's the most humane dog rule every instituted in a dog race,'' the 51-year-old musher said.

But it also means carrying the extra weight of a dog that develops unexpected ailments, said Lanier, an Iditarod veteran.

''I had at least one dog in my sled the whole time,'' said the 67-year-old retired pathologist of his 1983 run, and the only returning competitor from that race.

In this year's event, the old rule has been tweaked to allow dogs to be dropped ''in the interest of dog care and humane treatment.'' Affected teams would be allowed to continue, but saddled with a 10-hour penalty and ineligible for first place or the $100,000 purse. They still could qualify for lesser prizes, including a portion of the $40,000 raised by nine candidates vying for sweepstakes queen.

The kennel club's original sweepstakes took place in 1908 to much fanfare in Nome, several years past its gold rush heyday. The race caused a frenzy in a town heavily reliant on dog teams for winter travel and freight hauling. Crowds packed into race headquarters at the Board of Trade Saloon to check for team updates posted on blackboards and place thousands of dollars in bets. The purse that year was $2,500.

The sweepstakes was held yearly through 1917 until interest waned. Then in 1925, mushers and sled dogs from the region — including three-time sweepstakes winner Leonhard Seppala and his canine race veterans, Togo and Fritz — made national headlines with a relay run to deliver lifesaving diphtheria serum to Nome, a feat commemorated annually by the Iditarod. It would be nearly six decades later that the kennel club resurrected the sweepstakes.

The 1983 race was won by Two Rivers veteran Rick Swenson, the Iditarod's only five-time champion. He came in more than 10 hours behind the record of 74 hours and 14 minutes set in 1910 by John ''Iron Man'' Johnson. Swenson, 55, isn't in the upcoming sweepstakes, although he and fellow Two Rivers veteran Sonny Lindner have combined their dog teams as they did for the 75th anniversary race. Lindner, 58, has sled duty this time around.

Just as Lindner did back then, Swenson will be handling their dogs at the checkpoints. Race rules let competitors have all the help they want, but only at the official stops along the route.

Lindner, who won the inaugural Yukon Quest in 1984, has been training around Nome to get ready for his turn driving the sweepstakes team.

''It's been pretty cold and windy in Nome, so I reckon that's what we're going to get,'' he said. ''There's been a full moon, so I expect it will be pretty.''

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On the Net:

www.allalaskasweepstakes.org