FORT KENT, Maine — Quebec musher Martin Massicotte had a simple strategy to claim his seventh Can-Am Crown International Sled Dog Race win.
“From the start of the race I just stayed in front of second place,” a visibly tired Massicotte said soon after he crossed the finish line at 5:45 a.m. Monday at Lonesome Pine Ski Lodge in Fort Kent with his team of Alaskan huskies.
Second-place finisher Denis Tremblay of St. Michel des Saints, Quebec, crossed the finish line just after 6:30 a.m.
Massicotte led the 250-mile race through the North Woods from the start after taking off down Main Street in Fort Kent on Saturday morning.
He was the first musher to arrive at each of the race’s four checkpoints and the first to leave the final stop in Allagash for the 48-mile final push to Fort Kent.
“I’m very tired and having a tough time appreciating I won right now,” Massicotte said. “I am destroyed physically but conscious that I won.”
The dog team looked far better at the finish line than their 47-year-old musher.
“The dogs looked great coming in,” Don Hibbs, Can-Am race veteran and this year’s race marshal, said. “They were trotting really nice coming in.”
Hibbs is a five-time Can-Am Crown 250 winner and raced against Massicotte — and beat him — several times in Fort Kent and Labrador, Canada.
“He is a really, really good competitor,” Hibbs said at the finish line. “I raced against him when he was an up-and-coming racer and now he has really arrived.”
Hibbs said Massicotte’s consistent wins at the Can-Am are due to hard work and dedication year-round.
“He has to work hard year after year,” Hibbs said. “He’s really in his prime now [and] his prime seems to be lasting a lot longer than most mushers.”
Massicotte said the trails from Maibec to Fort Kent were excellent but joked he had “no comment” on the first half of the race trails.
Fifteen mushers took off down Main Street on Saturday and, by Monday morning, four — Jessica Holmes of Portage, Amy Dionne of St. David, Andy Bartleet of Albany Township and Becki Tucker of Dorchester, New Hampshire — had dropped out.
Overall, Hibbs said, the race was going very well.
“I heard the trail from Maibec to Allagash was perfect,” he said. “It did get a bit warm [Sunday] but the mushers are really happy about the trail.”
The Can-Am 250 trail takes teams from Fort Kent to Portage, where they turn into the North Woods to remote checkpoints at Rocky Brook and Syl-Ver camps. From there, it’s off to Allagash and then to the finish.
Mushers shared some of the trails with snowmobilers, and Can-Am Crown 30-mile race musher Jeffrey McRobbie on Saturday suffered multiple injuries when he was hit head-on by a snowmobile less than 2 miles into the race.
A 15-year-old from Pennsylvania has been charged with operating to endanger in connection with the accident, which sent the 59-year-old McRobbie to the hospital with multiple injuries that were not considered life-threatening.
Can-Am officials said Monday morning that McRobbie was still at Northern Maine Medical Center in Fort Kent. His dogs were not injured in the accident.
According to Hibbs, snowmobiles on the trail were a major concern this year.
“That was the one consistent complaint I heard this year,” he said. “This race is going to have to get a handle on the snowmobile traffic.”
On Saturday, several mushers expressed concern with the number of snowmobiles on the 100-mile race trail leading into Allagash, with at least one musher describing a series of near misses with fast-moving machines.
“Mushing and snowmobiling are two incompatible activities,” Hibbs said. “They cannot exist on the same trail [and] the obvious solution is to get them off the same trails.”
Both Massicotte and Hibbs had high praise for race organizers.
“The organizers of this race are super,” Massicotte said, vowing to return to defend his title for the eighth time next year. “Right now, I want to wash and sleep.”
