Iron Dog Divorces
This year’s Iron Dog race features most of the same well-known names to which fans have grown accustomed, yet not in the same order as in past years. The new pairings are all over the place. Iron Dog jokingly refers to these as the “Iron Dog divorces;” however, there is a lot more going on behind the scenes that tell a more complete story. Changing sponsorship, training scheduling conflicts, finances and, yes, sometimes personality conflicts – all play a role in how racers decide to pair up.
Notable this year:
Team 8, Tyler Aklestad and Tyson Johnson, are no longer. The pair raced together for years, winning the race in 2016.
Likewise, Powerhouse Team 16, Todd Minnick and Nick Olstad, who won the race together in 2009 and 2014, have parted ways.
Last year, Team 8 scratched following a crash in which Minnick and Aklestad collided just outside of the McGrath checkpoint. Aklestad and Johnson were able to limp along for a few hundred miles before scratching just outside of White Mountain, but Minnick was seriously injured and was airlifted from McGrath to a hospital in Anchorage for treatment. He and Oldstad scratched on the spot.
This year, the pot has been stirred, as Aklestad teams up with Olstad as Team 7, while Johnson races with Brad George as Team 6. Meanwhile, Minnick has had an astounding recovery from his leg injury, and is back on Team 16, this time with veteran racer Daniel Thibault. All three teams are riding Ski-Doo.
Also notable this year: Team 17 pairs longtime racers Tyler Huntington and Todd Palin – neither men raced last year, but both are no strangers to the win – Huntington in 2010 and 2011, and Palin in 1995, 2000, 2002 and 2007.
Bob Gillman, an Iron Dog Hall of Famer and 1990, 1991 and 1996 victor with his then-partner John Faeo, returns to the racing circuit this year, with Cody Moen, a 35-year-old rookie from Cle Elum, Wash., who now lives in Nome.
Both teams will be racing on Polaris sleds.
“I was going to race with my daughter, but the timing didn’t work out,” said Gilman, who has never raced with Moen before and knows from experience that the chemistry between racing partners can make or break a race. He and Faeo were a force in the 1990s, and their friendship remains today. In mid-December, he was in Faeo’s shop, working on parts tweaks on his racing sled, and he considered what this year’s race might be like with a new partner.
“This will be a little different this year,” he said. “I’ve been there, done that. This year, running with a rookie, I have to tell myself we’re just going to do this for the fun of it ... even though I know that competitive part starts to inch in. There’s nothing you can do about it – it’s there and doesn’t go away. As soon as the first engine starts, everybody’s off to the races.”
Still happily paired though, are current defending champions Chris Olds and Mike Morgan, a powerhouse team that has raced together since 2012, and won back-to-back Iron Dogs in 2018 and last year. Olds said a three-peat would be special, putting he and Morgan in the history books alongside the likes of Iron Dog legends Scott Davis and Mark Carr who dominated from 1997 to 1999, and John Faeo and Dan Zipay, who won three in a row from 1986 through 1988.
“For both of us, honestly we are pretty even keel – we don’t get too high or too low on any circumstance,” said Morgan. “I’m very opinionated and so is he, but that’s the beauty: We don’t insist we are always right.”
“It’s a lot for all of the racers to try and keep things together,” Olds said. “Mike and I fight a lot in the race, too, but we don’t direct anything negative to each other; at the end of the day we make mistakes and we are all human; it’s part of racing. We just put everything behind us and focus on that.”
Jeremiah Vanderpool from McGrath will represent Team 27 with his brother, Jerad. He thinks having a sibling as partner will lessen the potential for conflict on the trail. After all, the two rookies perfected the art of sibling bickering decades ago.
“These racers switch partners pretty frequently,” Vanderpool said. “That’s one of the things I hear a lot from them is that under the stress and fatigue of the race, being able to cooperate and communicate without getting frustrated is difficult.”
Olds, with Team 10, says he thinks this year’s new lineups will be interesting to watch in action.
“All the guys have mixed things up, but they are all still riding with the top riders,” he said. “It’s good and bad: It could potentially put together teams that are even stronger than before.”
On the other end, he said, it’s a new marriage of personalities – not just talent – and how those relationships will survive the brutal miles ahead is still to be determined.