The Iditarod Trail Committee handed out 11 awards plus a Dodge pickup this year. This has inspired us to hand out a few awards of our own. The winners can collect their prizes in person at Crow Village Alaska during the subsistence fishing season this summer.
Second Best Blog
We had to take our blog out of the running to give everyone else a chance. This year's award goes to Jon Little. Jon has run the Iditarod 5 times and since 2004 he has done a terrific job following the race from the trail providing us insights, interviews, and pictures as a spokesperson for Cabellas. When Cabellas yanked the funding for his work this year, Jon continued bloggin' from his kennel in Kasilof not missing a beat.
Best Kennel Blog
This was a tossup between Gwen Holdmann of Ken Anderson's Windy Creek Kennel and Evy Gebhardt holding down the fort at Aspen Hollow Lodging while Paul worked his way up the trail. Both provided insights into their husband's strategy, stories about the trail and past races, and added information about the four legged athletes participating. Any time we are provided more information about the dogs, we are impressed. We gave the nod to Evy, since she answered our email.
Best Insider Video
The runaway winner was the footage of Jesse Royer as her team was charging directly into the wind heading towards the shelter cabin on the Norton Bay as Royer was energetically double poling the whole time. We think this footage played a key role in her lead dog Kuling winning the golden harness as it clearly demonstrated Kuling's enthusiasm being in solo lead under those conditions, and the amazement of the Insider team regarding the lead dog's capability. Did Jesse really double pole all the way from Shaktoolik to Koyuk?
Best Smile
Lance Mackey's lead dog Larry once again looked to be in his element as he flashed his turd-eating grin under the Burled Arch wearing the winning team's lead dog flower necklace for the third straight year. This time he shared the spotlight with the youngster Maple, but he seemed even more content knowing that the future of the Mackey team is in good hands.
Best Newcomer
When the stuff hit the fan on the coast, and all the teams were contemplating what to do, the first creature brave enough to step out on the Norton Sea was Lance Mackey's newest star Maple. Mackey sometimes says she is a 2 year old, and sometimes says she is a 3 year old, but if she hadn't led the way on the what Mackey described as the toughest run he has ever done, the race would have had a different winner.
Best Interview
Jim Keller's interview of Lance Mackey before the race wins this award. You can see the unshakable confidence of a man who knows he has a super team to take him on a historic journey.
Best Message Board
BSSD's message board has the most enthusiastic fans an event can ever hope for. When they mentioned our blog, that sealed the deal.
Best Webcam
BSSD picks up another award for their movable camera at the Unalakleet checkpoint. We wish the finishline camera could be this good.
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3 comments:
I gotta agree. The BSSD message board rocks. It's not only the best Iditarod forum; it's the best forum of any kind, and the fans form the best on-line community ever. And that Unalakleet web cam is pretty cool too. (Plus the Ustream was awesome.)
Thank you so much for our two awards. Without Johncn (a BSSD administrator), our forum wouldn't even exist, so a BIG THANKS to him!
You guys rock too! :-)
We agree that Johncn does an excellent job. Thanks for the words of encouragement.
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