newsminer.com

NOME — Sonny Lindner has waited 25 years for today — to string a dog team along Front Street and drive them into the wildest reaches of the Seward Peninsula to battle for a $100,000 winner-take-all payday against some of the world’s best mushers in an old-school sled dog race.

The 58-year-old from Two Rivers is one of 16 dog drivers competing in the historic All-Alaska Sweepstakes, a re-enactment of a Gold-Rush-era race that is celebrating its centennial anniversary with the biggest payout ever seen in an Alaska professional sporting event.

Lindner will leave Front Street just after 10 a.m. today. In harness will be three dogs owned by five-time Iditarod champion Rick Swenson, one of his best friends and neighbors fulfilling a quarter-century-long pact.

“He’s been waiting around a long time,” said Swenson, 55, who finished his 30th Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race two weeks ago.

As a 30-year-old, Swenson and Lindner made a deal that Swenson would run the 1983 Sweepstakes, while Lindner would run next time.

Swenson used a handful of his own dogs, which had finished second in the Iditarod two weeks prior. Lindner had finished the Iditarod eighth that year, so they combined teams with the thought that they had found enough bombproof dogs on the 1,100-mile Iditarod trail to win the $25,000 winner-take-all Sweepstakes payout.

Recruiting tough dogs — and good help — is crucial for a race that prohibits mushers from dropping dogs, but allows outside assistance.

“I told him, ‘Well, you go this time. I’ll drive next time,’” Lindner said. “So I was the handler, he was the driver.”

Swenson won the race in a little more than 84 hours, making up more than two hours on Herbie Nayokpuk who led most of the race. But little did Swenson or Lindner know that 1983 would be the last year the Nome Kennel Club to host the 408-mile round-trip race from Nome to Candle for another 25 years.

“They talked about having the Sweepstakes in 1988,” Lindner said. “I’m just glad they had it while Rick and I are still standing.”

Using three dogs that helped Swenson finish 13th in this year’s Iditarod, Lindner seems ready for his biggest race of the season. He withdrew from this year’s Yukon Quest and Iditarod to focus all his time on the Sweepstakes.

It was likely time well spent. He’s going up against some stiff competition with four-time Iditarod winner Jeff King of Denali Park and two-time defending Iditarod and four-time Yukon Quest champion Lance Mackey of Fairbanks.

“Sonny Lindner racing in a 1,000-mile race doesn’t scare me,” Mackey said. “But in a 400-mile race? That makes me a little uncomfortable.”

Though Lindner has never raced the trail from Nome to Candle, he should know the way. Before the Iditarod started, Lindner drove his dog team from Fairbanks to the Seward Peninsula with another team and two snowmachines.

They followed the Yukon River to Kaltag, then traveled through the Kaltag Portage to the coastal village of Unalakleet, where they turned north to head toward White Mountain, the second-to-last checkpoint on the Iditarod Trail.

Instead of heading to Nome, the crew spent the next couple weeks training along the Sweepstakes trail, once a well-packed survey trail used daily by dog sleds and horse-drawn carriages traveling from gold mine to gold mine.

But when Lindner reached the trail, he discovered — by no surprise — that it’s no longer the busy transportation corridor it once was.

“It was all miserable traveling,” he said. “For a heck of a lot of snow and the wind blowing every day, it’s just what I expected. It’s going to be really rough.”

No matter how harrowing the conditions were for this three-week training run, Lindner is happy to start the Sweepstakes underneath the Burled Arch, the same arch used by the Iditarod. Lindner has crossed under the Burled Arch nine times since he and Swenson made their deal in 1983.

“Almost every time we’ve gotten together in Nome for the past 25 years, he’s mentioned the Sweepstakes,” Swenson said. “Since 2000 he said, ‘You know Rick, 2008 is coming so we better start getting our dogs together.’”

They’ve slowly picked the hardiest dogs to lead Lindner on a route that traverses three mountain ranges, about 50 water crossings and a wind-swept trail that is so rock-hard in some places, trail breakers needed chain saws to hack down cornices.

The Sweepstakes’ policy that mushers must withdraw if they drop a dog, has some people wondering if some mushers have 100,000 incentives to redline their dogs’ abilities to where it could cause permanent injury, or even death.

But Swenson said the rule will force dog drivers care for the dogs, perhaps better than those who race in the Yukon Quest or Iditarod, which allow dog drivers to drop tired, sick or injured dogs.

“Both of us have always emphasized dog care,” Swenson said. “And that’s paramount in this event because you can’t drop a dog and sure as heck don’t want one riding (in the sled).”

Working with his wife Kelly Williams as Lindner’s pit crew, Swenson will watch this year from the sidelines. He has complete confidence that Lindner will cross the Burled Arch with healthy dogs– and perhaps $100,000 richer.

“It would be fun to be out there with my team from the Iditarod; they were so outstanding,” Swenson said. “(But) I’m happier Kelly and I can be here helping Sonny. He only has three of our dogs, so that says a lot about the quality of dogs he has.”