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TAKOTNA, Alaska - Four-time winner Doug Swingley dropped out of the Iditarod Trial Sled Dog Race Wednesday, saying he froze his corneas along a treacherous part of the trail.
The Lincoln, Mont., musher, 50, said he injured his eyes when he took off his goggles because they were fogging up going down the Dalzell Gorge two days ago coming into Rohn. The problem has worsened since.
"I came in here blind in one eye," Swingley said, sitting at the table reserved for mushers at the Takotna lodge checkpoint, still 694 miles from the Nome finish line. "It isn't getting any better."
Thirty-eight miles up the trail, three-time Iditarod winner Jeff King of Denali Park was the first musher out of the Ophir checkpoint Wednesday morning.
Four-time winner Martin Buser of Big Lake was right behind, departing seven minutes later. John Baker of Kotzebue was third.
Also Wednesday, race marshal Mark Nordman reported that Wolf, a 5-year-old male dog in the team of musher Lance Mackey of Kasilof died Tuesday on the trail. A necropsy will be conducted to determine the cause of death.
On Tuesday, Jim Lanier of Chugiak arrived in Nikolai with a broken sled and a snapped-off sled runner. He had tried a temporary fix with clamps and a hockey stick.
While Lanier had another sled waiting for him, a tooth problem couldn't be so easily fixed. He grinned to display a jagged front tooth, broken when he was thrown from his sled on a rough stretch of trail and he hit the ice.
While the Iditarod was proving tough on some of the mushers, the dog teams appeared to be faring better. Most of the mushers said their dogs were moving well in the cold temperatures.
Charlie Boulding of Manley said his dogs perked up between Rainy Pass, where temperatures were about 20 degrees, and Nikolai, where it was 20 below.
A record 87 mushers, including five former champions, are competing. This year's purse is more than $700,000 with a first-place prize of $69,000 and a new Dodge truck. It normally takes mushers nine or 10 days to reach Nome.