Mushing, an Olympic sport?
“Why not a sport with dogs like ‘mushing’ in the Olympic Games?” The Spanish musher Víctor Carrasco, world champion in ‘bikejoring’ (bicycle pulled by a dog) in 2018, bets on this sled sport as an Olympic winter discipline, as is horse riding in the Summer Games.
He is seconded in his proposal by Mónica Pacheco, a Spanish veterinarian and specialist in team management in international races, and the Argentine Miguel Isla Pachecho, a musher from Buenos Aires who leads the first team from the Southern Hemisphere in the Iditarod, the hardest and longest race in the world (almost 1,800 kilometers.) The Iditarod will celebrate fifty years of tradition in Alaska on March 5, 2022. Víctor Carrasco and Mónica Pachecho have participated in different competitions organized in Alaska over the last few years. Mushing is a winter sport originating in Lapland (Finland) and groups different categories of sleds and other elements pulled by dogs. Spain has more than four hundred federated mushers and has several world and European champions in various mushing competitions. SpainSnow, the name of the Royal Spanish Winter Sports Federation, whose president, José María Peus, is a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), welcomes the proposal, but has not yet officially taken it to the meetings of the highest Olympic body. The initiative has generated more enthusiasm in the sports federations of the Nordic countries. The International Federation of Dog Sled Sports (IFSS) and the International Dog Sled Racing Association (ISDRA) are working to obtain Olympic recognition for mushing, which already participated as an exhibition sport in the 1932 Olympic Games. |