Cripple Confusion

One news outlet is reporting that John Baker reached the Cripple checkpoint of the 2010 Iditarod sled dog race first. The Iditarod Trail Committee issued a press release stating that Dallas Seavey won the Dorothy Page Halfway award - an award given to the first team to reach the Cripple checkpoint. So what gives here? Here is our explanation.

The Ophir to Cripple leg of the Iditarod is officially listed as 59 miles in length. Several years ago, the location of the Cripple checkpoint was changed so that this length is actually closer to 80 miles. Paul Gebhardt has intimate knowledge of that change. In 2008 he was leading the race after a long run session heading into Cripple, but he couldn't find the checkpoint. He had been on the trail long enough that he thought he had passed the checkpoint and doubled back and that mistake cost him significant momentum that he was not able to recover from. At this point, we don't know if John Baker ran into similar issues, but his GPS data certainly showed that he was slowing at this portion of the race and Dallas Seavey was steadily closing the gap. The GPS map still has the Cripple checkpoint in the wrong location. so for those watching the GPS data closely, it appeared that first Baker, then Seavey went past the checkpoint. Eventually Seavey passed Baker, and pulled into the checkpoint first to collect the $3000 halfway award stash of gold. We should find out the details of what occurred on the trail leading to this reversal of fortunes before long, but for now, it looks like Baker has lost some momentum.

UPDATE: Ionearth has now corrected the location of the Cripple checkpoint. (link)