Doping Scandal Imperils Iditarod Sled Dog Race

The Iditarod Trail Sled-Dog Race, the storied and controversial 1,000+ mile trek across the sparsely populated Alaska interior from Anchorage to Nome, which has featured white-outs, moose attacks, assault by drunken snowmobiler, and a long and bitter campaign by animal rights groups calling for its end, now faces the greatest threat to its continuation since it was first run in1973. That is the assessment Stan Hooley, long-time executive director of the Iditarod Trail Committee, gave USA Today in an interview last October 24, the day after the committee announced that four dogs on the team of four-time champion—and 2017 runner-up—Dallas Seavey, had tested positive for tramadol, a synthetic opioid banned by the Iditarod. Tramadol is used to treat pain and arthritis in dogs and cats and thus could be considered a performance-enhancing drug, because it helps animals and people run through pain. It can also act as a sedative, which limits its usefulness in competition, according to some reports.

Hooley calls the situation the Iditarod’s “darkest time.” He refers to forces internal and external working to rip the Iditarod apart. He says that Seavey had wanted the Iditarod Trail Committee to exonerate him, which it could not do, even while it lacked the evidence to convict him. According to some reports, the committee released Seavey’s name after a group of race veterans belonging to the Iditarod Official Finishers Club demanded that race organizers do so. The committee said it wanted to clarify a situation that had become unacceptably confused.

Hooley’s statement is remarkable, given that in the early 1990s animal welfare groups used dog deaths in the Iditarod to persuade ABC to cancel its television contract, which brought the race to an international audience each year. In the wake of ABC’s move, other major sponsors dropped their support. Yet, doping by mushers constitutes a more serious crisis because it would justify opponents’ frequently leveled charge that the Iditarod kills dogs by forcing them to run to death. The drug in question is an opioid, one of the class of drugs responsible for the current, human addiction scandal. It is used to suppress chronic and severe pain, thereby allowing dogs to run past the point where they otherwise would quit. What sponsor would want to be associated with such an event?

Seavey has flatly and vehemently denied doping his dogs, suggesting in a You Tube video and subsequent interviews that another musher or an animal rights activist spiked his dogs’ food.

What are we to make of those charges? While it is true that the food mushers cache long the trail at designated checkpoints is generally unguarded, people are usually around in the villages, and would presumably spot such tampering, and the remote checkpoints are difficult to reach. Granted, they are unstaffed except during the race, but someone would have to reach them by snowmobile, skis, plane, or helicopter from an occupied village, sort through the stored food to find Seavey’s, spike each packet, and return without attracting attention. It is possible, but it strains credulity.

It might seem paradoxical, but in the vastness of Alaska, outlanders seldom escape notice. The number of people actually following the race is relatively small and includes journalists, their pilots, race sponsors, and some race veterans who for one reason or another are not racing. Accommodations along the trail are limited, and chartering a pilot and small plane is expensive.

Another musher would have easier access to the food but would have the same logistical problem of delivering the drug without being discovered, since even wrapped in a tasty morsel, most dogs (like people) find tramadol a bitter pill. The saboteur would have to shove one down each dog’s throat without being noticed.

Offered in support of an insider as perpetrator is the apparent fact that tramadol clears the system in 15 hours, meaning it would have had to have been administered at White Mountain where mushers have a mandatory 8-hour rest or in Nome. Before this year’s race, Seavey requested that taking samples from his dogs be delayed for six-hours after their arrival in Nome so they could participate in a study of recovery rates. Permission was granted despite the strong possibility that Seavey would finish in the top 20 and thus be subject to mandatory doping control. Seavey now says his dogs were uncharacteristically lethargic upon their arrival. Such factoids clarify nothing; rather they raise more questions than anyone has yet to answer.

If the goal was to discredit the Iditarod, why not dope the winner’s dogs—in this case Mitch Seavey, Dallas’s father and, at 57 years of age, the oldest person to win the Iditarod?

As John Branch observes in his October 24 article in the New York Times, loudly and indignantly proclaiming one’s innocence is often the first line of defense for drug cheats in sports from cycling to track and baseball. Along with the disavowals often come boasts that “I [name your favorite cheat] have never failed a drug test.” In fact, no one has failed an Iditarod drug test the since testing was started in 1994, according to race officials, a claim some race participants have told reporters is untrue. Seavey has a cadre of defenders who ask why he would dope his dogs when he knew they were going to be tested, and why would he dope them during the race when the benefit comes during training, when drugs let the dogs train more intensely? Powerful, pain-killing opioids do more than that, as I said earlier.

We may never know what really happened in this case, although it would be interesting to know the overall condition of Seavey’s dogs at the finish in Nome, where four dogs from each of the top 20 teams are automatically tested—that is, do any of them have arthritis or suffer from severe chronic pain, such that they would benefit from a powerful painkiller? It would also be interesting to know whether other dogs from his team tested positive for tramadol. Furthermore, the nature of the study responsible for the delay in drug testing needs to be more adequately explained.

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Seavey denies ever giving his dogs a banned substance for any reason and suggests that the Iditarod Trail Committee is attempting to throw him “under the bus.” But, he says, he will not go easily. He has already withdrawn from the 2018 race in protest and because, he says, organizers would invoke a rule forbidding competitors from publicly criticizing the race or its sponsors.

Seavey is said to want to force Stan Hooley and the Iditarod Trail Committee out of office. Whether they should step down is not the immediate issue.

Ironically another musher violated the rule against criticizing the race the day after Seavey was identified, only she charged that the Seavey family, representing three generations of Iditarod mushers, had for years killed unwanted and underperforming dogs, denied others veterinary attention, and engaged in abusive training methods. Even if the Seaveys are being falsely accused, those practices are among the dirty, open secrets of sled-dog racing. Zoya DeNure posted her charges in a blog entry dated October 25, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), immediately called on state officials to investigate the Seavey dog yard. PETA later posted on line what it said were an anonymous whistle blower’s photos documenting the abuses.

But on November 2, Craig Medred, who has covered the Iditarod for decades and travelled the trail more times than some competitors, reported in his blog: An investigation by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough [where the kennel is located] into an animal-care complaint filed by People for the Ethic Treatment of Animals (PETA) has cleared the kennel of four-time Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race champion Dallas Seavey of Willow.

Please insert your caption here.Old style sled dogs for hauling scientific gear.

Source: By Rear Admiral Harley D. Nygren, NOAA Corps (ret.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons from Wikimedia Commons

The Iditarod was first run in 1973 to commemorate the delivery by sled dog relay of diphtheria serum to Nome in 1925 to ward off an epidemic and to promote preservation of remaining sections of the Iditarod Trail, a postal route from anchorage to the Alaskan interior during the gold rush. Wrapped in myth and legend from its inception, it became a glorification of the rugged Alaskan pioneer against the elements and vast wilderness. With Libby Riddle’s victory in 1985, and Susan Butcher’s four victories behind her lead dog, Granite [1986, ‘87, ‘88, and ‘90], it became celebrated as a major event where women could compete against men on an equal basis and win—and where purpose-bred mutts could run circles around pure-bred Siberian huskies.

The great paradox of the Iditarod is that an event intended to celebrate the bond between humans and dogs has become in many circles synonymous with animal abuse. In the past, I have argued that the Iditarod does not kill dogs. Dogs have died during the race, and the loss of each one is tragic. But no one was driving dogs to death. Tired teams would and did quit.

I can no longer make those arguments with confidence. Opioids and perhaps other types of performance enhancing drugs have entered the race, and it is up to the Iditarod to make itself drug free. If doing so requires changing the structure of the race, they should do so.

Dogs are fed powerful painkillers so they can continue to train or race past their pain threshold. Beyond that, fatal reactions are always possible. Feeding banned substances to dogs to improve their performance or give them an unfair advantage cannot be countenanced. Dogs unable to perform should not be asked to perform, nor should they face death if they do not.

Why can’t the Iditarod and other sled-dog races require participants to subscribe to a code of ethics that, among other provisions forbids the killing of dogs except for medical reasons—to prevent suffering from a congenital disease, for example? Microchips can be used to identify and track all dogs. According to the Iditarod Trail Committee, Rule 39, dealing with tests for doping, has already been modified and strengthened so cheats can be more quickly named and punished. But far more is needed if the Iditarod is to become what it was intended to be—a celebration of dogs and humans working together. If the Iditarod is unwilling or unable to make such changes, it should fade into the dustbin of history.