It had its ups and downs, but more importantly, it proved a point.
Twenty dog teams took part in the inaugural Road Runner 100 race, put on by the Dog Powered Sports Association of the Yukon (DPSAY) on Saturday during Rendezvous. The roughly 160-kilometre race, which began in Shipyards Park in Whitehorse and finished in the Aishihik area, saw 17 mushing teams and three skijor teams (cross-country skiers pulled by small dog teams).
Because of the distance involved, skijorers, with two to four dogs each, were required to carry so much winter gear that pulks were necessary. However, despite mushing teams having eight to 10 dogs, the skijorers gave the mushers a run for their money.
Had the two categories been combined, first-place skijorer Gaetan Pierrard would have broken into the top-half of the field, outpacing 10th-place musher Claudia Wickert by a minute.
“That was part of the point of this,” said second-place skijorer Jonathan Lucas. “We had two to four dogs, they had eight to 10, and we were towing more gear than they had to carry. And yet we’re in the body of the sled-dog teams’ results and that’s really good. It shows you can race skijors and sled classes together, they don’t have to have a separate set-up.”
Unfortunately, the race did finish on a bit of a sour note. The race had to be shortened by about 10 kilometres due to trail damage caused by an off-road vehicle.
“We terminated the race there,” said Lucas. “We were going to go on a bit farther but as usual, some clever person had taken their big machine and gouged out the trail.
“It must have been a very wide-wheeled machine. It came off the highway and ‘Look, there’s a trail,’ which was our packed trail. They decided to drive all over it and gouge it all up.
“It happens a lot on the Copper Haul trail.”
More information can be found at DPSAY website at http://dpsay.wordpress.com/.
Results
Sleds:
1st Crispin Studer – 7:39
2nd Hugh Neff – 7:52
3rd Pierre Duc – 8:22
4th Paul Geoffrion – 8:29
5th Kyla Johnson – 8:45
6th Karine Grenier – 8:47
7th Didier Moggia – 8:50
8th Deb Knight – 9:02
9th Ed Hopkins – 9:05
10th Claudia Wickert – 9:12
11th Martine Levalier – 9:18
12th Darrell Otto – 9:29
13th MC Leroux – 9:42
14th Ryan Kinna – 10:09
15th Steve Gibbons – 10:17
16th Brian Wilmshurst – 10:50
17th Laura Jane Lucas – 10:52
Skijorers:
1st Gaetan Pierrard – 9:11
2nd Jonathan Lucas – 9:45
3rd Darryl Sheepway – 10:32
Contact Tom Patrick at
tomp@yukon-news.com
