The GCI Open North American Championship is a three day race that draws competitive teams from around the world. With two 20-mile sprint races contested on Friday and Saturday, the champion is crowned after the exhausting final 27.5-mile race on Sunday. The winner is determined by the combined times for all three races. This is the race that sprint mushers have trained for annually since 1946.
The races start/finish line is in downtown Fairbanks right on Second Avenue, with the course laid out throughout the city and over through the Mushers Hall race grounds, just beyond the Chena River. It was amazing to see how they transformed the street into a dog race course literally overnight. They trucked in tons of snow which was groomed nightly for the following day’s race. There were many places to watch the various sled teams race against the clock. I took in the races at the start/finish line on Second Avenue for both Friday’s start and Sunday’s exciting finish.
There were 27 teams competing, from all over Alaska, the US lower 48 and even overseas. The youngest musher was just 16 years old and was a third generation competitor in this championship race. A team from Germany traveled the furthest. I cannot imagine flying from Germany to Alaska with all of that gear and 20 dogs!
Sled teams consisted of between 12 and 22 dogs, with one musher driving the sleigh. If a dog became injured or for whatever reason deemed to be holding back the team, the musher could remove it from the line but it had to be carried in the "basket" of the sled. There were no substitutions allowed, so whatever dogs started Friday’s race were the only ones allowed to race on Saturday and Sunday. On Friday every dog was marked with paint to verify its position as a starting dog.
The teams are started individually at two minute intervals. The 20 mile run took right about an hour... and the 27.5 miles around 90-100 minutes. At two points on the course, sleds going out passed sleds on the return portion of their run. They say that there is great opportunity for mishaps at these junctions, especially if the dogs don’t run straight or become distracted. I didn’t make my way to either of those two points on the course, opting to watch them start downtown instead
Speaking of the start, it was really amazing to see how excited the dogs got as the countdown to "GO" was called. The dogs were often barking and many times prancing and jumping in the line, anxious to start running. I think my favorite team of dogs was the one that consisted of all Alaskan Huskies with similar colors of white and grey. I have a photo of them attached to this review. It was funny because many of the dogs are mixes, with Alaskan or Siberian husky base with other breeds used for speed and endurance. They were not particularly large dogs either. I think that was what surprised me the most. I really expected to see the large stocky type dogs you see that are representative of the breed in the AKC shows.
While I was there for the start of the races on Friday, I didn’t stay for them to finish. Instead, I came back on Sunday afternoon for the completion of the final 27.5-mile race. The dogs all still seemed to have plenty of energy left, although some mushers were pushing hard to help their dogs get to the finish line. In fact, one was off his sled and running along side it pushing it as the dogs pulled.
After the race course was completed, the dogs were taken off their leads and out of the harnesses and chained to their team truck and fed. It was a real feeding frenzy of a liquid mixture that looked a bit like soupy porridge. They were ravenous, wolfing down every drop in their individual bowls.
When all of the racing was over and all teams in, Buddy Streeper of Ft. Nelson, BC (Canada) was crowned the champion with a record breaking total time of 204 minutes and 47.1 seconds, a full two minutes faster than the previous record time. There was a very nice article in the local paper if you are interested in reading more about the race and results: http://newsminer.com/2007/03/19/6017
NOTE: The title sponsor GCI is the largest telecommunications company serving Alaska.