Massicotte in first place before final run to finish 4 teams within minutes of each other at last layover

ALLAGASH – Four teams of mushers arrived at the Allagash checkpoint of the 10th Can-Am Crown International Sled Dog Race within 14 minutes of each other Sunday at about 6 p.m.

Martin Massicotte led the four teams into the last checkpoint before the end of the race at 5:54 p.m., seven hours and 33 minutes after starting a 60-mile leg of the 250-mile race.

Matt Weik of Remer, Minn., pulled in 10 minutes after Massicotte and 26 seconds before Stephane Duplessis. Bruce Langmaid was in fourth place, coming in four minutes later.

The four men will be making a run for the money on the final leg to Fort Kent after a mandatory five-hour layover at Allagash. It will be a dash to Fort Kent, 47 miles away.

“I’ve been seeing three sleds within a short distance behind me since 2:30 p.m.,” Massicotte said as he pulled his team in under cover of darkness. “It’s almost annoying see them there all afternoon.”

“One of them was within 300 yards at one point,” Massicotte said in French to one of his handlers. “I almost wanted him to pass.”

The first-place check of the $20,000 race purse is $4,500. The remainder of the purse is divided amongst the next nine mushers crossing the finish line. The fastest time in each stage is worth $1,000, and $4,000 will be split among the finishers of the race.

Sebastien Cassan of St. Michel des Saints, Quebec, won the 30-mile race Saturday with a record time of 2 hours, 43 minutes, 3 seconds, cutting the previous best time of 2:53:30, by Dan O’Farrell in 1999, by 10 minutes, 27 seconds.

Cassan won $1,200, almost one-third of the $4,000 purse for that race, for his effort. Thirty mushers competed in the 30-mile race. The purse is divided among the top 10 finishers in each race.

Marcel Drouin of Embrun, Ontario, won the 60-mile race in 5:48.59. He was 30 minutes off the pace set by Nelson O’Farrell, Dan’s brother, in 1999. His prize was $2,000 from the $7,000 purse for that race.

The two shorter races both started and ended Saturday. The awards banquet was held Sunday morning.

The Can-Am Crown race continued Sunday night into Monday.

“It’s a great race, with wonderful trails,” Langmaid, of Blackstock, Ontario, said of the Can-Am Crown International Sled Dog Race Saturday. He was in the lead before he took ill. “My dogs are fantastic out there, running well.”

Langmaid said he was feeling somewhat better Sunday when he reached Allagash.

“The good, fast times we are seeing are because of the firm trails,” he said. “We are floating along.”

That also was before the weather turned warm early Sunday morning. A warm front moved in, turned snow flurries into rain, and the sun warmed the afternoon into the high 40s and low 50s, creating soft trails. During the night Saturday, mushers had taken advantage of the night’s cool weather and run through the night.

Speeds of 10 miles per hour dropped dramatically Sunday afternoon. The warm weather took its toll on man and animal. A 60-mile run into Allagash from the woods turned into a more than eight-hour trek.

“My dogs are starting to feel the physical pressures of the pace,” Duplessis, a 38-year-old lumber mill worker from Ste. Zenon, Quebec, said when he was 150 miles into the race Sunday morning. “The dogs I have to drop here are veterans and that will hurt.”

“That’s what happens when you do 150 miles in 19 hours, even if we took three hours of rest,” he said while having breakfast. “I hope I can better my 10th-place finish from last year.”

Langmaid set a quick pace out of Fort Kent Saturday. He was first into Portage Lake, the first checkpoint of the race, 61 miles from the start. He did that leg in 6 hours, 38 seconds, averaging just over 10 mph.

He was half an hour faster than J. R. Anderson of Pine City, Minn., and Dan Bergeson of Grand Rapids, Minn. The next three mushers into Portage Lake, Duplessis, Don Hibbs of Millinocket, and Massicotte of St. Tite, Quebec, all came in within 12 minutes of Bergeson.

The fast pace continued when Massicotte blew out of Portage Lake 50 minutes later. Langmaid also posted the fastest time in the second leg, unofficially making that 22-mile run in 2 hours, 20 minutes. Several others were within minutes of the leader.

The pace of the race was evident when mushers reached the Maibec lumber camp, 15 miles from the Quebec border and about 150 miles into the race. The first six mushers there were within 24 minutes of each other.

Fate stepped in for Langmaid. Three of his dogs turned lame and had to be cropped from the race. Langmaid himself came down with a bug and was running a temperature. He was no longer himself, but took off on the next 60-mile leg anyway.

The first musher to leave Maibec at 10:21 a.m. Sunday was Massicotte, making him the leader of the race with 101 miles left. He was followed out five minutes later by Duplessis and Langmaid eight minutes after that.

At that point in the race, Massicotte was the only previous winner of the classic left in the running. Hibbs, a two-time winner of the race, scratched at Portage Lake Saturday with dogs who no longer wanted to run. Andy Nissley also scratched at Portage Lake because he was sick. Nissley had started the race not feeling well. J.R. Anderson of Pine City, Minn., scratched Sunday at about 5:30 p.m., 15 miles from Allagash.

The trail used by the mushers in the 250-mile event travels through 31 towns and townships from Fort Kent south to Portage Lake, west to Big Machias Lake, and farther west to the Maibec lumber camp. At that point, the race turns north to the Town of Allagash and then east back to Fort Kent.