Monthly Archives: December 2015

The Kearney Dog Sled Races have been IFSS Sanctioned!

IFSS

IFSS Sanctioned Event

Great News Dog Sledders!  In preparation for the 2017 World Championships coming to Haliburton, the Kearney Dog Sled Races has been sanctioned as a World Cup Event!  VP Anne McIntyre from the International Federation of Sleddog Sports (IFSS) has confirmed that all of the regularly held events at Kearney’s Races will be included which means we will need to make a few small changes to accommodate IFSS rules. 

The Kearney Dog Sled Races has been sanctioned as a World Cup Event!

2015 Purse ListInternational Federation of Sleddog SportsThe biggest changes will come to the Ski-joring categories – where once there were 2, now there are 4! We always had 1 and 2 dog categories, but now we also have to split them between male and female skiers.  And 4 categories means 4 purses!  For more details, please see our purse breakout listed to the right.

The male and female ski-jorers have different minimum distance requirements.  The women will continue to follow the 4 Dog Trail, as they have in past years, but the men will have to following the 6 Dog Trail as their race needs to be at least 6.2 miles long.  Because of this, we have had to alter the race schedule we’ve been using for many years now.

And while our schedule was changing anyways, we took this opportunity to swap our 4 Dog and 6 Dog Races during the day.  Many who attended our 2015 event will remember that our record breaking 30 teams registered to run the 4 Dog Race caused our event to run longer on both Saturday and Sunday than we had anticipated.  By running the Women’s Ski-joring categories, followed by the 4 Dog categories in the morning, we hope to end the day more or less on time.  The 6 Dog categories and Men’s Ski-joring categories will close out each day.  Our complete race schedule has been updated on our website and can be found at www.kearneydogsledraces.ca/race-day/ for more details.  These changes will ensure we still have all of our volunteers out on the trails for the duration of the races to ensure as much safety as possible to both the competitors and the public.

The 6 Dog Trail has been altered to include a loop in order to ensure that we have the required distance, as last year’s measurements had us somewhat shorter than 6 miles.  With this addition, we anticipate our trail being very close to the 6.2 miles required for IFSS.  Until we get some snow and can GPS it again, we won’t know for sure, but our Trail boss and his team have done the calculations with solid GPS’d measurements from the 2015 event, and they are satisfied with the plan.   All competitors will be briefed at the Saturday morning mushers meeting by our Race Marshall,  Jim Cunningham, as to how exactly this will work so that there is no confusion during the race. 

Both the women’s ski-jorers and 4 Dog categories are required to run a minimum of 3.2 miles, and our 4 Dog Trail meets this requirement already.  The trail we use for our 10 Dog Stage Race is considerably longer than the required minimum, so it will proceed as it did in 2015.  I know there are rumours flying that we will be bringing back our over-night 120 mile race, but these rumours are untrue.  Our mid-distance race will follow the same route and format as it did in 2015.

If there are any questions regarding IFSS sanctioning rules, or the changes we are making to our event to accommodate them, please direct them to info@kearneydogsledraces.ca and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

The KDSR Committee would like to wish all of our participants the best of luck as they vie for the opportunity to represent Canada at the World Championships in Haliburton in 2017.  Good luck!

Visit the following sites to learn more about the International Federation of Sleddog Sports: