Whatever the origin of sled dog racing, today it is a diverse sport that encapsulates a variety of offshoots in terms of the nature of the dog teams, what they are required to pull and how far they are expected to run (Table 3.1). Yet within this mixed bag there are events that stand out as being iconic of the sport. This status is strongly linked to the heritage of the sport and of the earlier explorers of the frozen north of the North American continent. So the iconic events of dog sledding are firmly based within northern Canada and Alaska, despite the sport now being popular in almost every corner of the world (including New Zealand, with its annual Wanaka Sled Dog Festival, which began in 1996 (Ibbotson, 2012) and the Sled Dog Association of Scotland, which was inaugurated in 1991 (Sled Dog Association of Scotland, 2007a)). Furthermore, they are the long- and ultra-long-distance, multi-day events that test the endurance of dog and man (for these events have long been constructed as sites of hegemonic masculinity reflecting the exploration of northern Canada and Alaska by the rugged, outdoors male). That this ignores a strong, though minority, representation of women in these events for a significant period of time is something that would be very interesting to pursue within a gendered framework, but which lies outside the boundaries of this book. For a history of the involvement of women in these events readers are urged to go to the book by Hood (1996) on the Iditarod. What we see running through all of these iconic events is the construction of an image. It is one that is an example of the contested and constructed nature of authenticity, which means the events do not necessarily present an accurate picture but rather one that the organizers and many of the participants (both passive and active) wish to buy into. The Yukon Quest, which is a 1000-mile race that was first run in 1984 (Firth, 1998), fits the iconic image of the sport of dog sledding very nicely as does the Iditarod, which wasfirst run in 1967 (Hood, 1996). As befits an iconic sporting event, both now attract major sponsors and are covered on global television. The result, Firth (1998: vi) suggested, is that many Europeans now refer to the Yukon Quest as ‘winter’s Tour de France’, comparing it to another iconic sporting event in the process.
In an ironic feedback loop the success of events such as the Iditarod and Yukon Quest has morphed them from just sporting events with cultural roots and associated implications into a multi-billion dollar business (Hood, 1996) where once again the dogs and mushers are effectively working. The difference is that instead of transporting goods and people for ‘work’ the participants are now helping to sell dog food to a world market, testing and marketing new equipment to an increasing population of amateur racers and selling all the other brands associated with the events. Even the transporting of people is back on the agenda now for sled dogs, thanks to the success of events such as the Iditarod, as we see tourists paying to be transported along the route of the race in sleds behind the last competitors (Hood, 1996).
Sled dog rides as a tourist attraction are not only restricted to following the iconic races. Rather, they have expanded to become something that tourists can do for anything ranging from a short afternoon break from their skiing holiday in destinations such as Whistler, Canada, to multi-day tours that are often operated as a sideline by those professional mushers who race in events such as the Quest and Iditarod (Coppinger, 1977; Evans, 2008). Examples of dog mushing holidays abound on the Internet across the snowscapes of Canada, the USA and Europe. The dogs have also become a tourist attraction in their own right as some tours now offer people the chance to get up close with the pups in their enclosures as seen in Fig. 2.2. Such an activity, while undoubtedly attractive to the tourist, serves an important purpose for the development of the dog. Through the constant attention they are given by a continuous stream of visitors they become accustomed to the human contact that is an integral part of the sled dog tourism experience, as differentiated from the life of the working sled dog. While it may be argued that only sociable dogs make the grade in this form of sled dog work, it is true that the dogs who get to meet and greet the visitors thoroughly enjoy doing so and love the attention they receive in return.
Fig. 2.2. Puppy petting as part of a sled dog tour.
Today, dog sledding is a popular sport in many parts of the world, with reports of a team even being run on the beaches of Hawaii in the 1970s (Coppinger, 1977), and has its own international organization, the International Sled Dog Racing Association, which was founded in 1966 (Palmer, 1983). In North America the sport features a mix of happy amateurs and a strong professional contingent whereas in places such as Europe it is almost entirely a pastime of the amateur (Firth, 1998). The nature of the races also differs outside of the sled dogging spiritual home, with events tending to be across much shorter distances. This may be a reflection of the amateur status of most participants, the lack of history of sledding as a means of transport, differences in the amount of appropriate available space and different land access regulations. Within the context of this section, the important distinction between sled dog racing in Alaska and northern Canada, and elsewhere in the world, is that in the former it is clearly something that has stemmed from the use of sled dogs for work whereas in the latter it has only ever been a sport. Yet today it is a popular global sport with many countries running their own national championships and the existence of a European Championships since 1984 (Firth, 1998). Interestingly though it has yet to become a sport of the Winter Olympics despite having been a demonstration sport at the 1932 Olympics at Lake Placid (Firth, 1998).
It is interesting to see that sledding today is firmly associated in the minds of many with the Husky. Yet as Coppinger (1977) noted, some of the earliest sled dogs are likely to have been the ancestors of the modern Samoyed, though how much they are comparable to