Five young dogs are staying at the checkpoint

This means that Ralph Johannessen has left five of his dogs in Kirkenes. - This were five young dogs which I had to take out of the race. They cannot keep up with the speed. That's why I decided to just start with nine of my most experienced dogs from the checkpoint here, says Johannessen. Unofficial sources from Kirkenes say that most of the mushers take one or two dogs out of the race in Kirkenes.

It looks like the teams had to pay their price for the mild weather conditions and the soft tracks at the beginning of the race. Especially the big and heavy dogs seem to have been drained for a lot of power.

May Conny Johansen arrived with 11 dogs in Kirkenes. She started just 40 minutes before Roger Dahl from Neiden. Roger raced with only nine dogs from Levajok but arrived just 10 mintes after May Conny Kirkenes. This shows again that fewer dogs do not necessarily mean slower speed.