Joe Runyan
Team Baker Announces the Iditarod Season with an Appreciation for Supporter and Friends The Iditarod Season was formally launched Team Baker, a tightknit network of friends organized by John’s brothers and sisters. A huge gala with food, featured speakers, off the wall humor, invited Iditarod volunteers, sponsors, mushers and friends is staged annually at …
Lance Mackey—The Champ is back in Town by Joe Runyan I find Lance Mackey, the 4X Iditarod Champ, back in town. Just off a third place finish in the Yukon Quest, a thousand mile run from Fairbanks to Whitehorse, left the veteran and team toughened for the Iditarod. I caught Lance and his wife Tonya …
2011 Champ John Baker—Final team Choices to travel with Snickers and Velvet—Tuesday, March 28 by Joe Runyan By Joe Runyan, 1989 Champ Background John Baker of Kotzebue, Alaska dominated the 2011 Iditarod with a strategy of prudent runs in the first half of the race that put his team of steady trotters into position to …
Live east of the Rockies? Your only musher representing half of the lower 48 states for Iditarod 2012 is veteran musher Ed Stielstra of McMillan, Michigan. This is a burden of responsibility that Ed, who has a sharpened sense of humor, was able to defuse by avoiding any direct response to my questions. It took …
Part II, Dave Olson, 2012 Honorary Musher, recounts busting out the Iditarod Trail with Joe Redington, Sr., By Joe Runyan, 1989 Iditarod Champ Background: I called Dave at 7AM, still not sure if I would catch him indoors. Knowing he had innumerable stories of busting out the Iditarod trail in the early 1970’s, I wanted …
Part I: The Inside Story on Dave Olson, 2012 Honorary Musher Dave Olson of Knik, Alaska was named this year’s 2012 Honorary Iditarod Musher, a recognition that his large following of friends and Iditarod fans felt was long overdue. Dave Olson, not only a veteran musher and four time Iditarod finisher, is one of Iditarod’s …
