How much does money matter in mushing?

NOME — Among even a handful of Iditarod mushers, perspectives on the matter of money and how it affects the race vary.

Willow musher Dallas Seavey, who this year became the seventh person to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race at least four times and claimed a $75,000 winner’s check, said he doesn’t think the race would change much if money were no object.

“No, I don’t think the money really makes that much of a difference because the people who are trying to win this thing, the money is the farthest thing from their mind,” Seavey said, a couple days after he finished the race. “It’s about winning the Iditarod. It’s about having the best dog team ever.”

Seavey’s fellow Willow musher Wade Marrs said he thinks money can make a difference in a team’s performance.

“It could make life easier to where I can be more focused on mushing rather than making ends meet,” said Marrs, who earned his largest career payday this year by claiming $51,825 for fourth place.

Seavey agreed with that statement.

“If all I had to do was train a dog team to race the Iditarod, it would be easy,” said Seavey, who also runs a sled dog tour company. “Instead I spend at least half my winter making enough money to where I can be able to train my dogs to race the Iditarod.”

This year’s first-place prize money was the largest in race history. Last year’s win netted Seavey $70,000, and his 2014 victory earned him just over $50,000. In 10 career races, the 29-year-old has won $396,215.88 in Iditarod prize money. He’s also won four pick-up trucks for his Iditarod wins and claimed $28,395 for winning the 2011 Yukon Quest.

All of that money, he said, goes to the dogs.

“In 2014, I won the Iditarod, and won $50,400. Then I turned around and, less than two weeks later, I wrote a check for $57,000 just for dry food,” he said. “That does not count more than that — much more — in meat and fat for my sled dogs.”

Wasilla musher Karin Hendrickson, who finished 38^th this year, said that didn’t sound unreasonable for a musher of Seavey’s caliber.

“It’s entirely possible that he’s spending $60,000-$75,000 (on dog food), I’d say it’s likely,” she said.

By comparison, Hendrickson said she probably spends $25,000 on food for her 29 dogs, and she has a small kennel by Iditarod standards. Her 2016 finish earned her $1,049, the cost of the Iditarod entry fee.

That financial disparity definitely affects her competitiveness, she said.

“If you want have a competitive kennel, you’ve got to have more dogs, and if you have more dogs, the costs go up,” she said.

To offset the roughly $45,000 she said she needs to run the Iditarod each year, Hendrickson works full time as an environmental manager for the state, and accumulates small funds from individuals she knows on Facebook. For this year’s race she listed 13 sponsors, only one of which — Kanaga Environmental Consulting — was not an individual or family.

In addition to prize money and day jobs, sponsorships are another way mushers can bankroll their teams.

Marrs listed 10 sponsors this year, all but one of which (The Machuzak family) were companies based in Alaska, New York, Nevada and the Czech Republic. Seavey listed just four sponsors: J.J. Keller and Associates (Wisconsin), Inlet Towers (Alaska), Custom Software Lab (Oklahoma), and the Great Alaska Council on the Boy Scouts of America.

Hendrickson said such corporate sponsors obviously make a difference, but noted that even well-heeled mushers aren’t getting rich off the sport.

“With the amount of money it costs to fuel a team, you could win every race you enter and not cover the basic costs,” she said. “That’s why people go with a (corporate) sponsorship.”

Hendrickson said she’d like a big-name sponsor, too — “I think I have a lot to offer,” she said — but no one’s come knocking on her door just yet.

Seavey said even having a sponsor like J.J. Keller is more work than people think.

“The reason we’ve been able to keep the same sponsor for so many years is because we treat it like a full-time job, providing them with enough material so that, as a business, they can continue to justify this as a good business decision, not a charitable donation,” he said. “I think a lot of mushers would do well to understand what a sponsorship is.”

Seavey also said people shouldn’t think that, fundamentally, he has a leg up on any other musher in the Iditarod.

“I’m not any more educated than anybody else — I don’t have a college degree, I don’t have a high school degree. But … we work really, really, really hard,” he said. “There’s not 10 minutes in the year when we’re not doing something to help finance our kennel.”

In the week leading up to the race, for example, Seavey said he gave hundreds of sled dog rides through Seavey’s IdidaRide Sled Dog Tours and had five public speaking engagements.

“I wore myself so thin prior to the race that the night before the Iditarod I finally cracked … and spent the first half of the Iditarod very, very sick, and that’s because we’re pushing ourselves to the absolute limit year-round,” he said. “Some mushers aren’t willing to do that.”

Marrs agreed that reaching the lofty heights Seavey has requires a phenomenal amount of work.

“Of course we wanna win this race one day, but we’re not just gonna step into that position,” he said. “We’re gonna have to work for it, and here we are in the process of working for it.”

Marrs said he picked up a sponsorship from outdoor wear company Columbia this year, which has definitely added to his comfort level (he now has a new parka to replace his 7-year-old one), if not his competitiveness.

And while money and sponsors definitely help, he said, the bottom line is that hard work is what pays the greatest dividends.

“We don’t get handed everything,” he said. “We gotta work for what we get, and earn it, and that’s a big part of life.”

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.