It doesn't manifest itself as loud sports talk, except perhaps in the bouseholds of the excited racers on the evening of the first heat, but you can tell by the understated comments by spectators that they very well understand what is going on. You might expect that, considering how recently people have depended on sled dogs for their transportation, but what is amazing is the amount of race knowledge. This puzzled me when I first came to town, because I thought people would be more interested in dogs for hauling as a body of knowledge, but then I came on a clipping of one of the Fairbanks sprint races of the late 1950s and couldn't help but notice that seven-eighths of the mushers were Native people from the Interior. It is really fun to go fast on a dog team. It is addictive and an entire art form in itself.
People here can be quite passionate about it.
Tanana is in a good situation geographically, being close enough to Fairbanks that the charter flight for a dog team is not unreasonable, and the trail mileage from the end of the road to here is not too daunting for mushing or snomachining. And the purse is high enough that, with all the other factor, we get some very competitive teams. Among all the other benefits, this brings a group of people to town for a little over a week who know dogs froma lot of different angles. What is neat and unique about a race in Tanana is that it is held out on the Yukon River, and in a place as linear as Tanana, with the river's high translate to a lot of possible vahtage points for spectators. It's all highly sociable up on the bank and down in the starting chute on the river, just a hive of activity.