CRAIG MEDRED

Swenson won't act his age

Five-time champ, now 56, cuts weight to keep up with foes

Published: March 4, 2007
Last Modified: March 14, 2007 at 06:44 PM

From the outside looking in, these are not good times to be Rick Swenson.

The winningest dog driver in the history of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race lives now in the cruel, gray twilight of the valley that seems to trap great athletes and hold them until they emerge into the gleaming light of legend.

George Attla knows this place. The Huslia Hustler visited there for years as his career sputtered toward an end on the streets of Anchorage. He finally retired from the Fur Rendezvous Open World Championship Sled Dog Race and went home.

Amid considerable fan fare, he returned to the city weeks ago to be feted and enshrined in the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame along with the late Susan Butcher, Swenson's old Iditarod nemesis.

Already a member of the Iditarod Hall of Fame, Swenson is sure to join Attla and Butcher among a special class of unique Alaska dog drivers some day. But for now, he is still racing -- although it's understandable if you failed to notice.

The spotlight has clearly moved on.

Once, nobody could talk about Iditarod without talking about Swenson. At the peak of his fierce rivalry with Butcher in 1989, Alaska Magazine tried to exploit their dual celebrity by publishing half of one month's Iditarod issue with Butcher's face on the cover and half with Swenson's.

Two years later, Butcher led the Iditarod to White Mountain, just 77 miles from Nome. She was seemingly on her way to victory No. 5, only to have Swenson steal the show. As a raging blizzard beat other mushers back to the checkpoint, he struggled to the front of his team and walked the dogs through a white, churning hell to reach Nome.

In so doing, he secured what might have been his greatest victory.

Only a couple years later, Butcher retired and Swenson's star began to fall. Martin Buser from Big Lake burst on the scene. He was quickly followed by Jeff King from Denali Park, Doug Swingley from Lincoln, Mont., and last, but not least, Robert Sorlie from Hurdal, Norway.

Today, the Gang of Four are the mushers Iditarod fans talk about. When Swenson's name comes up, if it comes up, it is usually as an afterthought or a historical footnote.

At age 56, Swenson is largely treated as if he is over the hill, though nobody quite has the guts to say so publicly. This is understandable.

Despite being soundly past middle-age -- unless we're all going to live to 110 -- Swenson remains as driven, focused, opinionated and pugnacious as ever, for better or worse. These traits, it could be argued, are required to climb to the pinnacle in sport or life.

Thus we tend to accept them in our champions -- until they falter.

And Swenson has faltered.

Last year was not a good Iditarod. He was 26th. It was the first time in the 28 races he has completed that he fell out of the top 20. It was only the third time in those 28 races dating back to 1976 that he'd been out of the top 10.

"I know that last year was his worst finish ever,'' said retired Iditarod competitor and friend Jerry Austin from St. Michael. "That was kind of extra hard on him. I don't know if there's anyone out there that feels more pressure than Rick, (though) I don't think anyone is putting any pressure on him but himself. He's always put a lot of pressure on himself.''

Swenson would never tell you this.

He has been known to do his share of whining -- particularly about bad trail, idiot reporters, the Anchorage madness of the Iditarod start and the undo attention he thought was being showered on Butcher in her heyday. But the one thing Swenson doesn't whine about is Rick Swenson.

As he endured the lead-up to this year's Iditarod start -- with all the media attention gravitating toward the Gang of Four -- all he had to say about how he was doing was that he really enjoyed training and that once he got on the trail, he'd really enjoy that too.

No doubt this is true. As much as any musher in the race, Swenson lives to run dogs. Austin once described Swenson as a "stupid, old dog lover,'' and that probably sums it up as well as anything. Swenson gets a little hit of pleasure every time he steps on the runners of a sled to head out on a trail behind his pals.

Still, his fall from Iditarod contender to Iditarod also-ran has to grate on his pride.

"It must be hard on his ego,'' said Bob Chlupach, a one-time, top-10 musher who ran with Swenson in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Swenson was in his prime.

Those days are now clearly gone.

In his last five Iditarods, Swenson finished 19th, 11th, seventh, scratched and 26th. In his first five Iditarods, he finished 10th, first, second, first and fourth. And the second-place showing was a photo finish so close there was confusion about whether the race had been won by Dick Mackey or Swenson. Swenson got his sled across the line first, but Mackey's lead dog broke the tape.

Swenson never contested the judge's decision as to who won. He simply came back and claimed another victory the next year.

Those were heady times for the transplanted Minnesotan who followed the Jack London stories of sled dogs and gold to the Alaska Interior and in some ways created in himself a new, Londonesque character for a new age.

Swenson spent his early years in Two Rivers mining gold in the summer and mushing in the winter. For 11 years from that rookie race in 1976 until 1986, his worst Iditarod finish was sixth.

If he wasn't winning, he was striking fear into the heart of the eventual winner. There was hardly a champ in those days who didn't spend the last miles of the race looking over a shoulder for Swenson.

He was truly king of the trail.

That the king might rise again is improbable, but not impossible.

Swenson trained his team hard this year and came into this race so thin -- his face gaunt, his bibs hanging on his 6-foot frame -- that some wondered if he wasn't ill.

"Atkins diet,'' he said. "Nothing but bacon and eggs, bacon and eggs.''

Friend Sonny Lindner -- another Iditarod competitor this year and an old friend of Swenson's -- thought the diet was more like steak, steak and more steak, but that's splitting hairs.

However Swenson got the weight off, he's a clearly slimmed-down version of the man who started last year's race by waxing nostalgic about how the pinnacle of Iditarod popularity may have been when he and Butcher were going head to head.

Butcher died over the summer, the unfortunate victim of leukemia. She left behind two young daughters.

Swenson, himself the father of three, doesn't appear inclined to look back now. This week in Anchorage, he seemed focused on the trail ahead, on getting out there in the Bush where he feels most comfortable and on getting back in the race.

He suggested fans might want to pay attention to the possibility there could be a six-time champion in Nome in a little over a week, but he didn't dwell on it. He dismissed his slimmed down figure as nothing especially new.

"I've done this before,'' he said.

Indeed, he has.

"That one year that Susan lost all that weight,'' Austin said, "Martin (Buser), Rick, myself, we were all trying to lose weight. Jeff King was moving up (in the rankings). Rick Mackey (Dick's son) only weighed 140 pounds.''

Buser, Swenson and Austin (who never managed a win despite a couple valiant tries that brought him close) didn't diet for fun. They understood that in all racing, from motorsports to marathons, maximizing the power-to-weight ratio is a key to victory.

It shows in Iditarod statistics.

While large men like Austin and Swenson battled the bulge in the 1980s, thin men like Mackey, King and a trimmed-down Buser started winning. They were later joined by Swingley and Sorlie, two more thin men.

Swenson has long known his size is a handicap, and he clearly came into this race having done everything he could do to lessen the load for his dogs. Only other aging athletes will truly understand the willpower it takes to not only shed a few extra pounds, but to keep going to lose those seemingly ordinary pounds too.

Whether any of this will make a difference on the trail in the days ahead remains to be seen.

The reality is it takes more than training and preparation to win an Iditarod. It also takes luck. That is true in a normal year. It is doubly true this year on a snow-short trail with some sections just waiting to bust a sled runner or contribute to a strained shoulder or sprained wrist for a key dog.

The odds are clearly against Swenson. Though the Iditarod media guide lists his age as 55, his December 1950 birthday makes him a solid 56.

Until King won last year, no musher 50 or older had ever claimed an Iditarod crown. But there have been plenty of old guys in the top-10. The late Joe Redington, who made the Iditarod what it is today, was a stunning fifth in 1988 at the age of 71 and ninth the next year.

If Swenson and his dogs can battle back into the top-10 this year, he will add to a legacy that is already beyond reach of any other musher.

Though King, Buser or Swingley could match, maybe even exceed Swenson's five victories, none of them are even remotely within range of Swenson's 24 top-10 finishes.

Yet, that's not quite good enough. Top-10 finishes really aren't the talk of the Iditarod.

After 1,100 miles of brutal wilderness racing each year, this competition comes down to the champion. Finishing sixth or 60th might be a moral victory for some mushers, but for the profession's best dog drivers, what counts is being first under the burled arch.

Swenson seems to have that focus this year. The big question is whether he has the dogs to match.

"I can't put words into his mouth,'' Austin said, "but I know that with the dogs all going houndy, he found that troublesome. I know, for me, I didn't really like that at all. But that's the way the race has gone.''

The hardy huskies of yesteryear have increasingly given way to the speedy greyhounds of today. A husky fan, Swenson's fading finishes in the last 10 years might merely be a reflection of someone reluctant to make the changes necessary to keep up with the times.

Still, despite what some say, old dogs can learn new tricks.

Swenson might have been down, but don't count him out quite yet.

Daily News Outdoor editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com.

On radio

RESTART TODAY IN WILLOW: aThe Willow restart will be broadcast live 1:30-5 p.m. on KMBQ FM-99.7 in the Valley and on KBYR AM-700 in Anchorage. Daily Iditarod reports will air 7:35 a.m., 10:35 a.m., 3:33 p.m. and 6:35 p.m.

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