Starting positions for the 100-mile bike/ski/foot race in the White Mountains National Recreation Area in March were drawn on Saturday at Silver Gulch Brewery in Fox.
Five of the six winners in the 2011 race will be returning to defend their titles. Only men’s bike winner and course record holder Greg Matyas of Anchorage declined one of the six entry slots reserved for the 2011 winners. The five winners who are returning are Heather Best (women’s bike); Kate Arduser (women’s ski); Anne Ver Hoef (women’s foot); Rob Whitney (men’s ski); and Trystan Herriott (men’s foot).
In addition to five of last year’s six winners, other notable names to make it into the race include Mike Kramer of Fairbanks, second among skiers last year; Kevin Britenbach of Fairbanks, second among bikers last year; Ethan Kopacz of Anchorage, who was fifth overall in the bike race last year; Max Kaufman of Fairbanks, fourth among men’s skiers last year; and Cory Smith, fifth in the men’s ski last year.
The race starts on March 25.
Of the 65 racers who won spots in the lottery, there are 33 bikers, 24 skiers and eight walkers.
The Bureau of Land Management limits the race to 65 participants and race organizer Ed Plumb decided to use a lottery this year to determine who got spots in the race. Racers had the month of September to enter the lottery and names were drawn at random to fill the first 65 spots and the remaining 55 racers were placed on a waiting list in the order they were drawn.
Notable names on the waiting list include Fairbanks cyclist Jeff Oatley, who won the 2010 race and was third last year; Anchorage cyclist Janice Tower, who was second among women bikers the past two years; and Owen Hanley of Fairbanks, third in the men’s ski division last year.
Of the 51 Fairbanks racers who signed up, 26 made it into the race. A total of 41 racers from Anchorage signed up for the lottery and 23 made it into the race. There are 10 racers from the Lower 48 who made it into the top 65 slots, including competitors from Michigan, Massachusetts, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Ohio and New Hampshire.
The 120 entrants was about what Plumb was expecting.
“That’s in the ballpark I expected but I actually thought more might sign up since people had no idea how many were in the lottery,” he wrote in an email.
While it was “a bummer” to see some local racers who attended Saturday night’s lottery wind up far down on the waiting list, Plumb said that overall the lottery worked well.
“I think the lottery was a success and opened up the race to a new group of folks but also maintained some of the previous racers,” Plumb said. “This also gave people plenty of time to register and the selection process was completely random.”
Plumb said he isn’t sure how many racers will drop out before the race starts. About a dozen racers dropped out before the race started last year and were replaced with people on the waiting list.
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