Final Can-Am musher comes in Race over early Tuesday morning

FORT KENT – All mushers in the 2008 Can-Am Crown International Sled Dog Race finished early Tuesday morning with the final musher, Bob O’Hearn of Sandown, N.H., crossing the finish line at 2:40 a.m.

He crossed the finish line 13 hours and 10 minutes after winner Martin Massicotte, of St. Tite, Quebec, who finished at 1:30 p.m. Monday.

The only rookie to finish of the three who entered Saturday was Jacob Golton of L’Amable, Ontario. Golton, 16, was also the youngest musher in the Irving Woodlands 250-mile race and possibly the youngest ever in the race’s 16- year history.

Golton finished the classic with nine dogs in harness at 7:46 p.m. Monday after 41 hours and 48 minutes on the trail that took him through some of the roughest forest and mountains of Maine. The time was good enough for ninth place and a purse of $800 plus his share, 1/13th of the $4,000 finishing- touch purse.

He wasn’t a rookie at Fort Kent, but it was Golton’s first time in the 250-mile race. He was third in the Can-Am Crown International Sled Dog Race’s Willard Jalbert Memorial 60-mile race in 2006 and 2007.

The youngster has been in dog racing since he was 4. He has been doing mid-distance races the last four years. Along with Fort Kent he has competed in Marmora, Ontario, which has his longest race at 120 miles. He has competed in other 45- and 80-mile races the last couple of years.

Sled dogs are not his only hobby. He also plays hockey and rugby, does cycling and water skiing and is an avid hunter.

In a bio prepared for the Can-Am Crown, Golton said he is a student and “professional pooper scooper.”

The mushers banquet was held Tuesday night. Some $29,000 in cash was presented to the 13 finishers of the 250-mile race. That includes $20,000 divided among the top 12 teams, with the winner receiving $4,500, five stage prizes of $1,000 each for the fastest four mushers between each checkpoint, and the $4,000 finishing-touch purse divided among all finishers of the race.

The usually tough race was made tougher this year by more than a foot of snow that fell in northwestern Maine during the first 24 hours of the race. The area also had fierce winds, with gusts more than 30 miles an hour, during the early morning hours of the second day of racing on Sunday.

Eight of the 21 teams that started the race scratched at checkpoints from Portage Lake on Saturday through Allagash on Sunday night.

Finishers of the race included mushers from Maine, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Montana and the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario. There were also mushers from Massachusetts, New York and Michigan.