Quote:
Originally Posted by Rain Man
The article says this, which confuses me:
The Iditarod can impose time penalties if a majority of the three-person panel agrees a rule was broken and that a competitive advantage was gained. Penalties can range up to a maximum of eight hours per infraction.
The 'and' is a key term here. What competitive advantage did he gain by not gutting the moose thoroughly? I guess it's a competitive advantage that he saved time by not doing it, but he obviously lost time by tangling with the moose in the first place and doing a gutting, even if it was insufficient.
Eh, maybe the competitive advantage is because he shortened the gutting time, but it still strikes me as odd. I'm sure he would have gone faster if he'd never tangled with the moose in the first place. So maybe instead of getting a competitive advantage, the penalty was for reducing a competitive disadvantage?
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short answer: yes, he shortened the gutting time which gave him a competitive advantage.
Longer answer: I have very little doubt he did everything he could to not tangle with the moose but moose are moose. They do what they want. And if that moose is in a bad mood and standing in a thicket of trees and the dogs come too close because they're paying attention to the trail and just enjoying running, that moose could well charge right out into those dogs. And a 1200 pound moose flailing its hooves could seriously injure or even kill one of those dogs. In such a case, the musher absolutely would need to kill that moose quickly. And at that point, the rules state that you have to gut the moose properly so its meat can be distributed.