The Greatest Dog Race In The World

Northern Advocate, 16 September 1941, Page 2

The Greatest Dog Race In The World

This is the thrilling story of the 420mile All-Alaska Sweepstakes, the longest and most gruelling race in the world, and of Scotty Allan, King of the Arctic Trails, and his wonderful racing dogs. It comes from “Your Dog and Mine,” a paper that came to Kupe from the Junior S.P.C.A. organisation of Auckland. CHAPTER I. Nome, snowed-in city beside Bering’s frozen sea! Nome, pioneer streets fluttering with the green and gold pennants of Derby Week: whistles, tooting, bells ringing, scurrying malamutes howling in comic unison with the shouting, joyous crowds. Boom! A cannon salute from Fort Davis! Fur-clad white men tumble over Eskimos in the rush towards the frigid shore in front of the town. The band strikes up. A mighty cheer echoes across the ice hummocks. And then, speeding like the wind down the silver trail comes the cause of it all —a dog team!

Dogs and driver are frost-whitened, gaunt, battered from three days’ and nights gruelling on the longest, most cruel racecourse in the world; but as they make the home stretch, every decorative tail on the man’s parka is dancing, and every weary, faithful paw on the pinktongued huskies is padding out a swift tattoo of victory on the beaten snow—victory for the white and gold colours streaming from the collar of the lead dog. "Scotty Allan! Baldy!” yells the crowd. “Three cheers for Sfcotty, winner of the All-Alaska Sweepstakes. Three for Baldy. the greatest dog' in the North!”

Amid wild excitement the team dashes over the line and stops, panting, in front of the judges’ stand. Men light to grasp the hand of the driver; women struggle to embrace him. The prize—ten thousand dollars heaped in a silver cup—is pressed into Allan’s tired arms. Enthusiasts hoist him to their shoulders and bear him in triumph towards the town, while others equally enthusiastic come behind carrying Baldy. the idol of Alaska dog-men; Baldy the glory of the racing trail who never ran “out of the money”; Baldy the most famous lead dog in the world, who brought his team in a winner seven times in the annual sweepstakes races! No leader is expected to stand up under more than two races over that four hundred and twenty mile course which comprises every hazard of the Arctic —the grinding ice of the Bering Sea. the frozen tundra where blizzards smother and Polar winds cut like blades, the mountain crests where men and dogs crawl on their bellies to keep from being blown over into canyons, the glare of ice lakes, the face of glaciers where drivers hitch the team to their belts and climb with spiked feet about the yawning crevasses, the stark bitterness of Death Valley which claims its toll of lives each year. On that course men and dogs not only match their speed, their wits, their endurance

against their own kind; but in addition they pit themselves against the savage, merciless elements of the North, where one mistake means death. On the Sweepstakes Trail it is common occurrence to have dogs frozen stiff in the traces and lost teams swept to sea. One in three drivers comes in snow-blind and raving mad from the cold and fatigue of that three-day race. But dog racing is to the Alaskan what horse racing is to other men, with the added fillip due to the terrible hazards ot the course.. As much as £40.000 has changed hands at the end of a dog race, and gold mines have been won by sportsmen who have wagered their all on Scotty Allan and his leader, Baldy. (To be continued)