Veteran musher Keith Aili of Ray took first place Sunday in the U.P. 200 Sled Dog Race in Michigan.
The 230-mile race that starts and ends in Marquette was his last, he said.
After scratching with an injured dog from the 34th running of the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon that ended Feb. 1, he sold his kennel to the Beargrease winner, Ryan Redington of Alaska, who will add some of Aili’s team to his team for the Iditarod, which starts March 3.
On Monday, Aili said he was happy with the win, but felt a little weird knowing it would be his last race. Aili won the U.P. race in 2014, 2000, 1999 and 1998.
Meanwhile, Ryan Anderson, also of Ray, took fourth in the U.P. 2000, and said Aili had a great run.
“The nice thing is the title trophy has been in Ray every year since 2010 — other than last year,” Anderson said of the two local mushers’ success at the race. “That’s pretty cool.”
Retirement
Aili said he’s retiring from racing because of the time and money it requires.
“It costs so much more money nowadays to have dogs,” he said Monday. “When I started in the ‘90s, things were so much cheaper. Now it’s way too expensive, so you have to work more, then you don’t have time to train.”
“And,” he said, “I lost a little bit of my drive, too.”
He’s never enjoyed the racing part of the sport, he said. “Even when I was young, I enjoyed the training more, but you have to race to make it pay.”
However, he noted, the U.P. race and other races this season, have been the most competitive in his mushing career.
“And that also made winning this more special,” he said of the race.
He said he sold his entire kennel three days after the Beargrease, and the team he used for the U.P. race left for Alaska right after the finish.
This is Aili’s second retirement. He took about seven years off from the sport and returned in 2013.
And while he joked that if he won the lottery, he may rethink his decision, he said he’s probably not going to be completely out of the mushing scene. He may help out with training teams for other mushers in the fall.
Or, he may not. It’s just too soon to tell, the carpenter by trade said.
“I might be up for an adventure to go see relatives in New Zealand,” he said. “Who knows?”
Knowing his team will continue the sport that they’re born, raised and trained to do makes selling them a little easier, he said.
“They are not just going to run and have fun,” he said. “They are going to a person who will race and do well with them.”
Anderson
Anderson said Monday he felt pretty good about taking fourth place.
He won the race in 2016, 2015, 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010, and finished second to Aili in 2014. Anderson is the only musher to win the event six times in its 29-year history. He did not compete last year.
Anderson said he would have liked to finish in the top three, adding this is the first year since 2007 he hasn’t done that, but he said the third run in the race wasn’t as good as he felt it could have been.
“With these dogs, I can’t complain, I wish I had done better, but this was as good as I could do with the team. One bad run put me out.”
Prior to that bad run, he said four teams, including his, were within 15 minutes of one another. Anderson finished with eight dogs on his team, while the others had 10.
When he realized he couldn’t make the time up, he said he relaxed a bit and enjoyed the ride.
“I just thought we’d have fun,” he said. “It was kind of nice going to Marquette and not having to run up hills, through deep snow. I didn’t do any work and the other guys were pushing. I have been in their shoes many times, and it was nice this time not to look back.”
He said the last 10 years of competing have been intense. “I would have liked to be in the top three, but you can’t always be,” he said laughing. “Tom Brady didn’t win the Super Bowl this year.”
And he agreed with Aili, that recent years have brought stiffer competition.
Ten years ago there were maybe two or three really good teams, he said. “Now, there’s like eight,” he said, as he drove through snow toward Borderland Monday.
And while Aili says he’s hanging up his harnesses, Anderson’s season isn’t yet finished.
Anderson will take a team of yearlings to the Wolf Track Classic Saturday in Ely.
“It’s more for the future of the kennel,” he said of the Ely race. “The younger dogs get a chance to go.”
He may also compete in a stage race in Calumet, Mich., in March. He’s never done a stage race, he said.
“But I won’t know until I see how the dogs look at the end of the week,” he said.
Anderson said he’s already thinking about the U.P. race for 2019. He called this an “in between year” with his team. “I don’t have superstars.”
But next year, his yearlings will have grown a year older and have more races under their harnesses and be better prepared for the competition.
