Don’t Laugh, Jamaica’s Reppin’ In The Iditarod
Let’s cut to the chase: Jamaican bobsledder Newton Marshall will finish the Iditarod. That’s not my opinion, it’s his. We’ve all seen “Cool Runnings,” we all understand the humor of a Jamaican makin’ a run (a mush?) at a sport reliant upon a climate directly opposed to the humidity and j’orts to which Newton is accustomed.
But you got all that in the headline. What you didn’t get is how Jimmy Buffet and bicycles are involved. And that, dear readers, is far more entertaining.
The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which started Sunday in Willow, Alaska, is a grueling 1,100-mile race that usually lasts about two weeks. The moment-to-moment race itself is not terribly complicated. The skill and will come into play when the sledders and dog team begin to tire, freeze, grow hungry, get lost, run at a pace the team hadn’t prepared for and so-on. None of these obstacles dwell exclusively in arctic regions. The story here isn’t what this Jamaican dogsledder is doing, but how.
Oh, okay. I can sense you’re really interested in the what. Here goes: The 2010 Iditarod won’t be Marshall’s first dance. The 26-year-old completed in the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race (think of it as the French Open to the Iditarod’s Wimbledon) and finished 13th out of 29. He was able to do that, in part, with the help of his trainer, three-time defending Iditarod champion Lance Mackey, from whom Marshall is leasing his 16-dog team.
You don’t have to be a sled snob to know that three-time defending champions don’t train any old musher.
Marshall leads his dogs, Pinky, front, and Marbles, as he drives his bicycle sled training rig on the beach in St. Ann, Jamaica.
Although Marshall’s goal to become just the third black musher to cross compete in the Iditarod isn’t a joke – it kinda was in the onset. Originally the who dog sled idea started as a way to take Jamaican tourists on tours. It was never intended to be sleds, so much as dune buggies. It wasn’t even Marshall’s idea. He was simply a dog-tour guide.
Clearly when you have a pack of dogs carrying you around on … well, anything really, at some point in the process you’re going to have to at least consider the Iditarod, right? Imagine if you were gliding around on the strength of rowdy pooches, do you think it would take you any more than five minutes for the thought of the world’s most famous dog-sled race to enter your brain? I give it 90 seconds – max.
That’s essentially what happened. A black guy from a sweltering climate entering the Iditarod would, at the very least, attract attention to the dog buggie tours back home.
Danny Melville, a partner in Chukka Caribbean Adventures, founded that tour organization in 2005. Melville saw Marshall’s enthusiasm.
“I just said, ‘Would you like to give it a try?’ ” Melville recalled. “He said, ‘Yah, mon.’ ”
I can’t believe Jamaican’s actually say “Yah, mon,” but who am I to argue?
From the AP:
Thus began the young Jamaican’s transition to long-distance mushing, launched by a two-season training with Hans Gatt, a veteran musher from Whitehorse in Canada’s Yukon Territory. There also were mid-distance qualifying sled dog races to run.
Gatt, who in February won his fourth Quest, has his doubts about Marshall’s upcoming Iditarod performance, saying he had to be pushed hard along the Quest trail.
Midway through a recent Quest, Gatt waited long hours at the Dawson City checkpoint, worried about Marshall and the dogs he had leased to him. Far behind in his competitive game plan, Gatt withdrew from the race after giving Marshall a “wake-up” talk.
From that point on, Marshall moved from 23rd place to 13th.
“If he has what it takes to finish the Iditarod, it’s going to be a lot up to Lance,” Gatt said. “Newton himself? No, he does not have what it takes.”
Wow. Gatt sounds awesome, huh? Not at all bitter that he had to withdraw from the race while his pupil finished in the upper half.
It reminds me of my friend who took a trip with me to go gambling in Atlantic City. He busted out within a hour of our arrival and spent the next three hours telling me how I should bet. Both instances are clear-cut cases of “thanks, but no thanks.”
So again, to reiterate, Marshall isn’t in this race for publicity (tough luck, Newt!), he’s in it to compete.
“I don’t want to have any doubt in my head that I won’t be able to finish the race,” he said. “I will finish this race.”
And as promised, Jimmy Buffet has something to do with this story. But if you’ve read this much just to find out what it is, then you’re a big enough Parrot-head that I’m surprised you don’t already know. Turns out, Mr. Margaritaville, who spends a lot of time in Jamaica (you might have heard) has been Marshall’s primary sponsor for years.
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Photos courtesy of Yahoo! News via the AP
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