Not only has Mackey repeated as Iditarod champion, but for two years years now he’s won both The Last Great Race and the Yukon Challenge. That’s unheard of. Do we know if maybe his dog team is on HGH? Maybe Mackey was secretly videotaping the other dog sled teams running through their pre-race warmups. Someone call Arlen Specter!

Heather is a native of North Dakota and raced in her first Idiraod Trail Sled Dog Race last year, finishing a respectable 56th. (Heck, just surviving is more than respectable.) I’m a little worried about her chances though from looking at her dog team: she has one pooch named Tweaty and another named Kitty. I thought champion sled dogs should have names like Thunder or Iron Claw or King. But then I’m a pasty couch potato sitting in front of my computer, so what do I know?

Rohn is still just a teenager but he has already won the Iditarod Jr. and is now preparing for his very first run in the real Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. You’d think the pressure to follow in dad’s footsteps might be tough to handle, but he seems pretty level headed in this short interview.

Oh, you don’t think that the fashion runway can prepare you for The Last Great Race, but you don’t know the runway; the long hours, the harsh conditions, it’s survival of the fittest out there. And what better place to learn how to deal with a pack of wild animals than in the fashion world?

DeNure, a native of Madison, Wisconsin, started modeling when she was 13 and worked her way up to international fame working in Italy. But she threw away that life of fashion and parties for a different world raising dogs in Alaska. Now she operates the Crazy Dog Kennel with husband John Schandelmeier in Gakona, Alaska. Having placed second in the Gin Gin 200, she’s ready to tackle the 1,100 miles of the Idiarod Trail with her team. (Check out her blog for daily updates on their preparations.)

Gisele Bundchen might have Tom Brady, but she’s got nothing on Zoya DeNure.

Whaley is a 24-year veteran of the National Guard, so he has the skills to survive in the harshest conditions. He’s a master-sergeant so he commands respect. And he’s from Franklin, Tennessee, once the hometown of Miley Cyrus (aka Hanna Montana), so there’s that.

Most of all, though, Whaley has a dream, and dreams are powerful, just ask Hanna Montana. Dreams can take you anywhere you want to go, even if that place is Nome, Alaska, in the dead of winter, though why couldn’t the dream have bothered to buy plane tickets instead of making you ride the back of dog sled all the way? Stupid dreams.

But we salute you Sergeant Whaley for following your dreams and becoming the first Tennessean to enter the Iditarod. If you want more info on Whaley’s pursuit of Iditarod glory, check out his official web site here. Sweet Niblets!

The 2007 season was a good one for Mackey as he became the first person ever to win both the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod in the same year. Both races he won with record times, completing the 1,600 kilometer Yukon Quest in just 10 days and two and a half hours; his Iditarod victory run took just nine days and five hours.

Mackey was born and raised in Alaska and comes from a long line of Iditarod champion mushers, including his dad and brother. The weird part is both of them wore bib #13 when they won, and Mackey was wearing the same number when he won last year. (Cue creepy music.)

Mackey of course raises dogs at his Come Back Kennel there in Fairbanks. You can read more about him and his dog team at the official web site.

One word: Iditarod.

Yes, the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is set to begin its 36th running in about three weeks, with the ceremonial start in Anchorage scheduled for March 1 and the restart the following day in Willow, Alaska.

This is man and beast battling to survive 1,100 miles of unforgiving Alaskan wilderness. We’re talking about wind chills of -60 degrees and colder. Blizzard conditions. Ice and snow. Dog poop, lots and lots of dog poop.

We here at oddsnark will be bringing you wall-to-wall coverage of this amazing event over the coming days, including profiles of the hearty mushers who will brave the elements for Iditarod glory and their amazing dog teams. Once the race gets going you can follow along the action right here with our race updates all week long (or however long it takes for them to reach Nome).

I say “whopping” as if I’m making fun, but what I really mean here is that is a whopping long time to be out in the harsh conditions of Alaska’s hinterlands and still survive. It is also a long time for a team of dogs to pull a sled across 1,150 miles of ice and snow. For that, I would say Halverson deserves to get the $69,000 in cash and brand new pickup truck that winner Lance Mackey recieved.

Halverson finished the race just 14 minutes behind 57th place finisher Donald Smidt, and actually managed to make up about 2 hours on her nearest competitor during the final sprint from Safety to Nome. Even more impressive, she only had eight dogs still running on her team, half as many as Smidt.

And so we bid a fond farewell to the frontier land of Alaska and all those brave and hardy mushing teams. Congratulations to everyone who competed. There’s now only 50 weeks until next year’s race; I can tell you’re already excited.

Witnesses told race officials that Brooks struck each member of his team with a stake used for marking trails when two of the dogs refused to continue running on an ice field near Golovin about 90 miles from the finish in Nome.

I’m glad to see that the Iditarod is taking a hard stand on this, but it does seem funny that beating a dog can get you booted from a competition, while smacking your basketball players around only gets you a little bad press and maybe a warning from the NCAA. Maybe if college athletes were furry and cute we might stand up for them a little more.

The disqualification ends a rather brutal race for Brooks. One of his dogs, Kate, died during the last stage of the race, but he failed to wait at the checkpoint in Safety to report it. Because of the rule violation, Brooks was initially given a time penalty that dropped him from 12th place to 15th place. (An autopsy on the dog did not reveal any connection to the reported abuse.)

Meanwhile, the Iditarod still grinds on with eight teams still out on the trail. Ellen Halverson has fallen back into last place after briefly passing Donald Smidt. At last report, she left Koyuk early this morning about two hours behind Smidt with 170 miles left to go. Maybe this race will end sometime this week and then I can finally stop bothering you people with all this useless information.

Ellen Halverson, a strong candidate to win the Red Lantern award, has moved up from last place in the Last Great Race. She managed to pass fellow rookie Donald Smidt sometime during the night on the leg between Unalakleet and Shaktoolik, completing the run in eight hours and two minutes. Smidt, a native of Wisconsin, left Unalakleet more than an hour before Halverson but took almost 10 hours to reach the next checkpoint. The mushers are now just over 200 miles from the finish in Nome. Keep on the trail, you hardy mushers, and we’ll see you at the Burled Arch.

We now return you to your basketball game, which I might mention is played indoors with no chance of anyone getting frostbite. Pussies.