Schnuelle takes early Iditarod lead

Sebastian Schnuelle, the German born musher who now resides in Whitehorse Canada has charged forward from his middle starting position to the lead 200 miles into the 1049 mile 2010 Iditarod sled dog race. As his seasoned 16 dog team leads coming into Nikolai, he finds himself in a familiar position. In the 2009 edition of this race, Schnuelle started in the middle of the pack and worked his way into first place by the Nikolai checkpoint. Given that he leveraged that early start into a second place finish, it should come as no surprise that he is re-utilizing a similar strategy. Another habit he might not have shaken quite yet is looking over his shoulder for a team commandeered by the now legendary Lance Mackey. Mackey, who won the 2009 race ahead of Schnuelle started 13 places behind Schnuelle that year and had closed to within 6 teams of the him by Nikolai. Mackey started 14 places behind his bushy haired foe this year and thus far has closed within 9 teams of the lead.

Other teams within 20 miles of the lead are Mitch Seavey, John Baker, Hugh Neff, Warren Palfrey, Hans Gatt, Jeff King, Dallas Seavey, Zack Steer, Gary Willomitzer, and Aliy Zirkle. There is plenty of leap frogging of teams at this stage of the race as the variety of run rest schedules is typically diverse this early in the race. The Iditarod GPS tracking service has the potential to give the fans additional insight into those schedules if that data could be supplied in aggregate similar to what is done with the free GPS service provided by the 1000 mile Yukon quest, however, that capability has yet to be leveraged by the Iditarod Trail Committee, but perhaps we will see that in future years.