Iditarod 2010 Race: Jeff King Leads, Whitey the dog missing

by Sudha Krishna | March 12, 2010 at 12:32 pm

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Iditarod Race 2010: Jeff King and Lance Mackey Up Front as Whitey, A sled dog goes missing.
The Iditarod 2010 Race is heating up with 4 time winner of the Iditarod race Jeff King in the lead at the half-way checkpoint in the 1,770 kilometer Iditarod race. Lance Mackey, defending champ and throat cancer survivor, is second as the two rivals compete with 63 other mushers and sled dogs in the mammoth Alaska race from Anchorage to Nome.
Iditarod Race 2010, Resources

The dogs' reward after nearly 10 hours on the trail from Cripple? Fresh straw, spread out by King, food and a nap.

"We're only halfway into this thing," former musher and current analyst Bruce Lee wrote on the Iditarod Web site, "but one thing is obvious: Whoever wins this thing is going to have to beat Jeff King's team."

Meanwhile, Whitey a 3 year old male sled dog part of team led by Musher Justin Savidis, is missing.

[q url=""]Savidis and the rest of the team went on to McGrath and immediately reported the missing dog to the race judge. The Iditarod Air Force and other Iditarod personnel traveling between Nikolai and McGrath were alerted.Savidis is taking his mandatory 24 hour rest in McGrath in hopes that Whitey will be located and brought back to McGrath so he can continue with his team.[/q]

The prize money for the Iditarod 2010 race is $590,000. In 2008 the prize money for the Iditarod was $925 thousand. The 1,100 mile race has hit hard times.

"We're certainly having to work harder in these challenging economic times to raise the revenue that we'd like to raise to restore that purse to levels we accomplished a couple years ago," Stan Hooley, executive director of the Iditarod Trail Committee, said this week.

Sled dogs have been tested for performance enhancing drugs for years but this year for the first time Mushers will be tested at the Iditarod 2010 race as well.