Montana musher Doug Swingley, who is sitting out this year’s Iditarod, was among 19 mushers who started the International Pedigree Stage Stop Sled Dog Race in Jackson, Wyo., on Friday.
Crowds lined the street and snow flurries fell as the mushers began eight days of racing across Wyoming, bound for the Feb. 2 finish in Park City, Utah. Swingley finished the initial 3-mile stage in 9 minutes, 14 seconds, good for 15th place.
Grant Beck of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, was the early leader, with Swingley’s wife, Melanie Shirilla, in second. Jacques Philip of Nenana is the only Alaskan competing, though several mushers in the field have raced the Iditarod.
Serious racing begins today with a 90-mile stage from Lander, Wyo., to Irish Canyon.
Unlike the Iditarod, mushers race specific distances each day in a stage race and then rest up for the next day.
Swingley, 54, is a four-time Iditarod champion who has only missed one Iditarod start since his rookie run of 1992. He won in 1995 and had three straight championships from 1999-2001.
After finishing second in 2006, he broke two ribs and scratched last year when he was thrown from his sled about five miles outside of the Puntilla Lake checkpoint as his team rounded an icy hairpin turn.
Source:The Anchorage Daily News
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