Thank goodness that's over!
In a quick summary Milos had good control of the race from the start, leading the way with Jimmy Pettersson following behind. He said he controlled the speed and it was really nice. Jimmy then went ahead as he had a GPS and they agreed he would keep pace. Jiri, Pontier and Radek were close behind. In an unfortunate turn of events, Jimmy took the wrong trail with Milos, Jiri and Pontier following. Radek managed to take the right trail which meant Milos and the other teams had to turn around and were now chasing Radek. Pontier managed to turn first giving him a slight advantage although his dogs got tangled in the process.
At this point, about 50km in and now minutes behind, Milos had to speed up so Radek couldn't get away and it pushed Balto and Slash a bit too hard. Both struggled with the speed having not run for a week. The rest of the trail was just really hard work from there.
No official results are in yet but Milos came 6th. Remy Coste took a surprising win, followed by Jimmy then Jiri. Radek crossed the line about 4.5 minutes before Milos and Pontier 45 seconds before Milos. It was a decent result from a bit of a disastrous stage for us. Radek now has only half an hour to catch us and we have 5 minutes to Pontier. But we are thankful it wasn't worse than that! There's still a lot to be grateful for.
Milos hopes to be back with a stronger team tomorrow. We've just worked out that 11 out of 14 dogs have been sick with 3 out of the race for a week. It's really held us back so it is a small miracle we are hanging on to third. It's just a shame we couldn't come here and show what our dogs were capable of as they were in great shape this year. Oh well, we are thankful the dogs seem to be doing ok and Waf and Toby are our absolute stars of the show!
See you tomorrow.
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