March Madness of a different kind

On 03/03/2013 at 08:41 PM by Ranger1

I only follow two sports. Well, actually, one sport and a major event. The sport is football, and the event is the Iditarod sled dog race. I've had a love affair with the Iditarod since I first found out about it as a little kid of six or seven. To me, it is the ultimate in athletic competitions. The mushers spend almost as much time running as the dogs do, and both are superb athletes. It combines endurance, speed, strategy, and planning. The mushers have to know what their competitors and their teams are capable of, they have to plan what to bring, what to have dropped off at checkpoints in terms of supplies, where to rest, how much to feed their dogs and how often. They have to be as in tune with their dog teams as a good quarterback with his offense, maybe even more so. After all, a football game only lasts an hour, the Iditarod is about 1000 miles and takes the best of the best teams at least eight days to complete, back of the pack can take up to 14 days. There are rivalries and favorites, and favorite rivalries. There's the mushers who run the race with winning in mind, and those who are there to just see if they can do it. There are mushers who have run the race while dealing with diseases such as cancer and diabetes. I will spend the next two weeks obsessing about the race, I've paid my yearly subscription fee and I will use it to my best advantage. I'll be checking the GPS tracker to see where my favorites are and trying to guess their strategies - where they'll take their mandatory 8 and 24 hour breaks, whether they stay in checkpoints or bed down in the wilderness, how many dogs they'll have left at the finish, and who will win this year.

Thinking about all of this, it suddenly occurred to me: why isn't there an Iditarod video game? I can see it being a great sports sim, think of all those variables you'd have to play with. I could also see it as being an adventure sort of game. I think the sports sim type of game would be the better way to go, though. I might actually play a sports game if it were based on the Iditarod.

As for my favorite musher? DeeDee Jonrowe will always be my favorite, but I like and respect all the mushers. Especially this guy.

Matt Snee Staff Writer

03/03/2013 at 08:51 PM

whoah, you can track it on GPS? that's pretty fun. I guess you can wake up in the middle of the night and check on the status of the mushers.

And a Jamaican musher?

Ranger1

03/03/2013 at 09:05 PM

You gotta pay for the subscription to use the GPS tracker, but yeah, I'lll be checking very time I wake up. It's especially cool because there's no other way to check on the status of the mushers in between checkpoints. There's some serious distance between some of those little villages. And yeah, a Jamaican musher.

GrayHaired

Solid Snake ran the Iditarod...at least he said so in Metal Gear Solid

03/03/2013 at 09:06 PM

Are you putting me on? I guess I'm going to have to play that game now and find out.

03/03/2013 at 09:13 PM

Im trying to post the video now

http://youtu.be/IaEFJNewkvE

Just click the link

Anyway, He does say He's a musher....it's only 1 minute long

and it's in the first 15 seconds

03/03/2013 at 09:15 PM

Well now I'm curious...

03/03/2013 at 09:19 PM

maybe you should give Snake and MGS a second look, after all, your own brother and then Me love the game, so it has to be good!

03/03/2013 at 09:24 PM

It was never that I wasn't interested, just so many, many other games all vying for my attention. I think I had just started playing this game right before I got my current gen consoles, so of course it got shoved back in the drawer, I had new toys!

03/03/2013 at 09:26 PM

Well, there's still time....you're young still.

smartcelt

03/03/2013 at 09:53 PM

People don't realize the strength and stamina required to compete in that event. I watched a documentary about it once. The dogs are just amazing. They are tremendous athletes,just like the mushers. I think a video game is in order!

03/03/2013 at 10:01 PM

So what genre would you want for the game, Wayde?

03/03/2013 at 11:19 PM

Definitely an adventure title. Where you face challenges in the wild. And you have to manage not only your own stats and health,but those of each dog also.

Super Step Contributing Writer

03/04/2013 at 04:49 AM

The guy you linked reminds me of a Disney movie about a Jamaican bobsledding team ... which unfortunately, I remember hearing was kind of dumb and didn't do the real life story justice.

Interesting and very cool that there are also Jamaican mushers.

As for the videogame, sadly, I think the lack of a sim might come down to how big a market there is for it? I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer, but that'd be my guess; however, I think smartcelt's idea for an adventure game could help matters, I know I'd be intrigued!

And I could be talking out of my butt about the market for it, not like I've looked this up, and if they can spend years getting the cockpit right for my older brother's flight sim I'd never heard of before, and make games based on the Olympics, they can damn well make a game about the Itidarod! Now, who would you send letters to about making this happen, I wonder? lol

03/04/2013 at 06:02 AM

The serum run to Nome in 1925 that the Iditarod commemorates would make the better adventure game, I think. As for who to contact, probably the Iditarod Trail Committee. Yes, I have been thinking hard about this, lol.

And there is one Jamaican musher.

03/04/2013 at 07:53 AM

Oh, he's the only one? My mistake, that's even more awesome!

Aboboisdaman

03/04/2013 at 11:18 AM

1000 miles? That's amazing! I didn't know that there was a sporting event based off of mushing. Those dogs must go through a lot.

03/04/2013 at 11:37 AM

Aaron, there are several big distance races. The Iditarod is the most famous, but the Yukon Quest is about the same distance. One of the qualifiers for the Iditarod is the Can-Am, which is run in both Canada and Maine. It's more of a middle-distance race, though. There are other races called sprint races that are under 100 miles that take place all over the country. Mushing's a pretty big sport, but not many people know about it. I started getting interested back when ABC's Wide World of Sports used to follow it. Plus, we had neighbors who had sled dogs and used to race in sprint races. My grandparents took me down to Lake Winnipesaukee to see the sprint races down there, and then my neighbors organized one on the lake we lived on. It was pretty cool.

03/04/2013 at 12:05 PM

Thanks for the info Tami. It does sound interesting. I'm gonna look into this a bit more. We used to have some neighbors that raised wolves. It was really neat seeing how they dug trenches into the ground. Although hearing them howling at night was disturbing lol.

Coolsetzer

03/04/2013 at 11:55 AM

Sounds cool. I know of the dog sled championship thanks to the mission brief of Metal Gear Solid. It's nice to hear more about it. A game of it sounds interesting. There's a iditablog app in the iOS store you might want to check out.

03/04/2013 at 12:35 PM

Thanks for the info on the app, but I don't own a cell phone or a tablet. I get email updates from the official Iditarod website and I have a paid subscription to all the exclusive content, so imagine I'm pretty well set up, though.

Jamie Alston Staff Writer

03/04/2013 at 04:45 PM

"Iditarod"...so that's what it's called! I never knew what the official name for that type of race was. It sounds like a lot of fun to keep track of. How does person get a GPS and pay a subscription fee? Is there a website?

03/04/2013 at 07:27 PM

Jamie, that race is called the Iditarod. Dog sled racing is the sport. Or mushing. I explain a little more in depth to Aboboisdaman. If you click on the link to the Iditarod page in my blog, it will take you to the official site. Look for subscriptions in the upper menu bar, click on that, and voila! The GPS tracker is part of the Ultimate Insider package, I think it's around $35. I bought a subscription for my grandmother for Christmas, too.

PixlBit

March Madness of a different kind

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