All Alaska sweepstakes
Under All Alaska Sweepstakes , the first is sled dog race of Alaska known.
Large gold discoveries were made in Alaska around 1880. Large numbers of people poured into the Nome , Klondike, and Fairbanks areas during this gold rush . Due to the conditions in the far north, freight transport was a problem that could only be solved by dog teams during the long winters. Harsh demands were placed on these dogs. Competitions quickly developed to determine who had the best dogs and which team was the fastest. From these small, local competitions, the "All Alaska Sweepstakes" developed in Nome in 1908, in which the total stake was paid out to the winner. The first winner was a regular postal team with cargo harnesses and a cargo sledge. As a result, importance was quickly placed on proper racing equipment with special sleds. The following year, Scotty Allan, equipped in this way, started with a sled that weighed only 31 pounds, much less than the load sled from the previous year.
The legendary race
As young as this sport was, it has already attracted mushers from all over the world to demonstrate the capabilities of their teams. In the second race in 1909, the team of William Goosak , a fur trader from Russia , took third place with his comparatively small dogs that he had imported from Siberia, forerunners of the Siberian Huskies . Just one year later, teams of this type of dog took first, second and fourth places and caused a sensation because they outperformed the larger dogs in the competition, which were common in Alaska up until then.
Individual evidence
- ^ Horst Rodenbeck: Sled dog race in Alaska. Lehmanns Media, 2009, ISBN 9783865413062 , p. 135.
Web links
- All Alaska Sweepstakes ( Memento from November 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Internet presence of a club from Nome, which deals with the race.