Winning, Women, and Poodles

Over 1000 dogs pulled on their booties and started running on March 5^th  this year, just like they have on the first Sunday of March since 1973.  They left Anchorage determined to make their humans proud--bringing the first musher into Nome on March 15 at 2:20 in the morning.  The second racer arrived less than an hour later.  The third place finisher had the decency to wait until most people were out of bed, sledding across the finish line at 9 in the morning.  Over the next few days 68 more mushers would cross the Iditarod's finish line, while 14 starters would be beaten by the race itself at various checkpoints along the way—Unalakleet, Kaltag, Galena, Ruby, Cripple, McGrath, Nikolai, Rainy Pass, and Skwentna.  At 23:51 on March 19^th, almost the 20^th, the last musher arrived in Nome and the widow's lantern was extinguished.   Dallas Seavey won the race, but as is so at sports banquets from high school through pro teams from volleyball to ping pong there were other awards presented at the Musher banquet too:  Sportsmanship (John Baker), Most improved (Noah Bumeister), Musher’s Choice (Matt Fador), Golden Clipboard (Nulato)…there were awards that mere skiers would not understand. 

My interest in the race is peaked by two types of competitors—Women and poodles.  As a young woman I swam and skied on men’s high school and college teams because there were no women’s teams at the time, and though competing was fun, winning was not an experience the “girls” would reminisce about.  So I am fascinated by the fact that in this sport women not only compete against the men, but they often win!  Susan Butcher was a 4-time winner (1986, ‘87, ‘88, ‘90) not just competing--but dominating the sport.  She placed in the top 5 in 12 of her 17 attempts. (Before the Iditarod she was the first person to drive her sled dogs to the summit of Mt McKinley!)

Published in Washington Post 3/17/16, courtesy John Suter

And as a dog-mom to my Standard Poodle Picabo (yes, named for the great world class skier Picabo Street) I take vicarious pride in the fact that while Susan Butcher was winning races, John Suter was running somewhere in the middle of the pack with a sled pulled by poodles.  With three poodles on his team in 1988 he placed 38 out of 52 in just over 18 days.  A year later, with an all poodle team, he finished in only 14 days.  He continued to race his fluffy dogs through 1991.  Although poodles did “kick husky butt” they are now banned from the race with all dogs who are not considered “northern breeds.” There is no question that even as they took on the drive to run in the snow from the huskies they were raised with, the poodles retained their generous spirits. In a recent Washington Post interview (March 17, 2016) Suter described their combination of win and wag this way “If you fall off the sled, the huskies will keep running down the trail, [while] the poodles will turn around to see if you’re there and do a U-turn and come pick you up.”  During the era of Susan Butcher and John Suter Sport’s Illustrated reported that it was a time when “Women win the Iditarod and men mush poodles.”

For U.S. skiers March often offers the best downhill hurdles of the season.  But as we gather après ski, conversation turns to the March phenomenon happening in our most northern state—kudos to the men, women and poodles who love to race across the snow!