It's going on 7am Thursday morning in Alaska and mushers have now been on the trail for 3 days and almost 17 hours. GPS trackers have both Anna and Kristy mushing near mile 345, putting them about an hour out of Rohn, race mile 352. Recall that I do not expect them to spend much time within Ophir itself, but rather will resupply and address anything with respect to the dogs before mushing out to near mile 372 for their next trailside campout as they make their point to the halfway point of Iditarod.
Official race standings do show the twins checking promptly out of McGrath with their 24s complete and 12 dogs on the line each on either side of 2:30am. Anna was reported out in 26th place with Kristy in 27th.
The front of the pack is in Iditarod (race mile 432), with Brent Sass the first to arrive there around 6pm Wednesday evening. He was the proud winner of the GCI Dorothy G. Page Halfway Award. The back of the pack is into McGrath and likely satisfying one of their mandatory rest requirements. On that front, plenty of mushers now show having completed one of those two rests, and four mushers have actually completed them both - including Ryan Redington, who's name has been at the front of the leader board for most of this race. Certainly a guy to keep an eye on.
We have had two additional withdrawals from the race since I last updated that metric. Rookie Brenda Mackey and veteran racer Gunnar Johnson are both out of the race. Brenda made the decision in Nikolai feeling it was in the best interests of her dog team. Gunnar was regrettably withdrawn by race officials after testing positive for Covid-19 in McGrath. Per race protocols, he was first tested with a rapid antigen test and when that came back positive, he received two additional molecular-based tests which also came back positive for the virus. The multiple tests rule out instances of false positives. Iditarod is following the remainder of their protocols per race officials with respect to isolating Johnson, safely transporting him back to Anchorage, and performing contact tracing.
Safe and swift travels to both mushers and their dogs as they make their way back to their home kennels.
This leaves us with 42 mushers on the 2021 Iditarod trail. And it's turning out to be a slightly shorter trail that initially planned, with race officials opting to remove the Flat loop from the race trail due to excessive snow in the region. With the Flat loop removed, mushers will ultimately race approximately 832 miles in total by the time they've returned to Deshka Landing.
Official race standings do show the twins checking promptly out of McGrath with their 24s complete and 12 dogs on the line each on either side of 2:30am. Anna was reported out in 26th place with Kristy in 27th.
The front of the pack is in Iditarod (race mile 432), with Brent Sass the first to arrive there around 6pm Wednesday evening. He was the proud winner of the GCI Dorothy G. Page Halfway Award. The back of the pack is into McGrath and likely satisfying one of their mandatory rest requirements. On that front, plenty of mushers now show having completed one of those two rests, and four mushers have actually completed them both - including Ryan Redington, who's name has been at the front of the leader board for most of this race. Certainly a guy to keep an eye on.
We have had two additional withdrawals from the race since I last updated that metric. Rookie Brenda Mackey and veteran racer Gunnar Johnson are both out of the race. Brenda made the decision in Nikolai feeling it was in the best interests of her dog team. Gunnar was regrettably withdrawn by race officials after testing positive for Covid-19 in McGrath. Per race protocols, he was first tested with a rapid antigen test and when that came back positive, he received two additional molecular-based tests which also came back positive for the virus. The multiple tests rule out instances of false positives. Iditarod is following the remainder of their protocols per race officials with respect to isolating Johnson, safely transporting him back to Anchorage, and performing contact tracing.
Safe and swift travels to both mushers and their dogs as they make their way back to their home kennels.
This leaves us with 42 mushers on the 2021 Iditarod trail. And it's turning out to be a slightly shorter trail that initially planned, with race officials opting to remove the Flat loop from the race trail due to excessive snow in the region. With the Flat loop removed, mushers will ultimately race approximately 832 miles in total by the time they've returned to Deshka Landing.
