Exciting til the end

Finnmarksløpet 2005 is heading towards the end. But even after about 800 km into the race it is a close call. 5 to six mushers are fighting for the top spots. - Once you are so long into the race it is decisive how you divide the resting time. The more you rest, the faster they go. The ration between these two factors will be deciding who will be ending with the first places, says Finnmarksløpets expert Trond Ørslien. Read the whole analysis here:

On Wednesday night Roger Dahl and Harald Tunheim were leaving Varangerbotn with a two hour lead ahead of the next team. A lead they kept all the way to Sirbma. Harald and Roger have taken as much rest as the others at the checkpoints so therefore it has to be the speed on the trail that their lead is based upon. Tore Bergby was the 3 going out from Varanger with a bigger team than the first two. Tore has been on the watch a couple of hours behind the leaders for quite some time and his team looked extremely fresh when they took off towards Sirbma. Only 15 minutes behind them followed Petter Jahnsen who was going fast in the beginning of the race. Pete chose to fall a little bit further back and let his dogs rest more in the middle of the race to keep up his speed towards the end. This strategy seems to work since he has a lot of speed in his team right now. Pete was 30 minutes faster than Roger and 19 minutes faster than Harald in the last stage. But will he be able to catch up the 3 hours he is behind Roger Dahl?

Once you are this far into the race it is decisive how long you let your dogs rest. The more they rest, the faster they run. Form here on it is 200 km and two checkpoints again to Karasjok, which is the races last checkpoint. There the teams will have their 8 hour mandatory rest, before they tackle the last 120 km to the finish line. By experience there are very few changes after this 8 hour rest, all the teams are round about equally fast. Therefore the positioning in Karasjok can already be decisive. The trail from Varangerbotn to Karasjok is 200km of flat, but hard trail and lots of river-mushing on the Tana river. One can rest at Sirbma after 70 km and Levajok after 110km.

It should be extremely interesting to see how the leaders will set their resting times to get all the way to Karasjok. You can cut down on the rest in Sirbma and Levajok and hope that the speed does not diminish too much. Or you can put your money on resting more and then use the extra speed to catch up again on he river-ice on the way to Karasjok. Every year we can see the mushers using these two strategies. The last 130 km are constant river mushing monotonus and mentally tough for the dogs as well as the musher.

The weather forecast predicts fresh wind, headwind on the river and many factors will have an influence on the speed on the river with headwind. The size of the team and the resting time have a bigger influence under these circumstances, but also the ability of the mushers to keep the motivation up for himself and his dogs gets more important towards the end of the race. This year we have a big group of mushers throwing themselves into the fight for the best spots. When the teams come into Karasjok, the wheat is seperted from the chaff.

Trond Ørslien