Husky News

The Grande Odyssée, one of the world’s most difficult dog sled races, is currently underway in alpine regions of Switzerland and France. The real stars of the show are, of course, the dogs and, in our second report on the event, WRS’s Conor Lennon finds out how the huskies cope with racing 1000 kilometres over 11 days.

HENRI KAM: they are real athletes with very hard training, like people running marathons or triathlons. For La Grande Odyssée they train for almost one a year. And like professional sportsmen they have a nutritional programme also and I can say they have a kind of mental preparation.

Henri Kam, one of the organisers of La Grande Odyssée, paying tribute to the dogs pulling sleds and riders around the gruelling mountain course, which takes in resorts in the Valais and the Chablais region of France.

It’s clear that during this event the animals get the care and attention of any professional sportsperson. Unlike the humans involved, these dogs were born to race, and they’ve been doing so for a long time…

HENRI KAM: sled dog is the first public transport method in the world. In Siberia 6000 years before they found means that prove people were using dogs to move from one place to another.

They have to look after themselves, eat the right food and take part in detailed training programmes. Swedish musher Peter Karlson, who’s been one of the competition leaders, took me through the regime his dogs follow…

PETER KARLSON: It’s a lot I would say. Since the beginning of August we have been training 4 to 6 hours a day. It’s very important they get good food, that they can keep on running like this…very good…that the thing they eat goes out in the body to the muscles and doesn’t just pass through: dry food, this Swedish food, and we also add some meat to that.

The race is one of the hardest because it takes place on mountainous terrain, whereas most others are held on fairly flat terrain. This leads to specific sports injuries and, to make sure these are kept to a minimum, there are 7 vets available throughout the 11 day competition. Dominique Grandjean is one of those vets, and one of the race organisers.

DOMINIQUE GRANDJEAN: we have high quality athletes. They’re dogs but they’re athletes and they face sports medicine problems. They’ve been trained for that, they’ve been raced for that but it’s a race, it’s a sport so we’re facing traumatology in the front legs, especially when it’s going down because you have most of the body weight on the front legs so you get shoulder problems, wrist problems. If it’s too warm or they’re too stressed they might get stress diarrhoea. Then if it’s really too warm or they’re really too stressed they get dehydrated, and acute dehydration is a real problem, as it is for humans. This is mainly the specific stuff we’re going to face.

Each musher has a pool of 14 dogs he can draw on, and any tired or injured animals can be left with the backup teams at designated drop points. But this is not like a Tour De France cyclist changing his bicycle: the mushers I spoke to have a very strong bond with their dogs: they’re all in it together as a team, and without a complicit relationship, success in the sport is impossible.

PIERRE HERITIER: they are my dogs from old time! I am training the dogs, and live with them. They are my dogs! It’s mandatory to have the feeling for going on this race.

TIM HUNT: They’re my family. We have a dog yard, a number of posts with chains, and we have three big pens or paddocks that we let them loose in so they can run free.

That was Swiss musher Pierre Heritier and American Tim Hunt. There are still 6 days to go, and there could be more injuries but for now, these huskies are raring to go, and fitter than than the proverbial butcher’s dog.

Source: worldradio.ch