Jana Henychová
How a a Czech took on the Norwegians at their own game – racing husky dogs
Words Lubomír Sedlák Photos Jana Henychová / Vladimir Weiss
Of the 36 entrants in the 2009 Finnmarkslopet sled dog race in Norway, only seven were women. Six of these were Norwegian, which stands to reason – you’d expect the locals to excel at this most extreme of sports. But the seventh was a surprise outsider – a husky champion from the considerably warmer climate of the Czech Republic. What’s more, Jana Henychová held her own as four male rivals fell by the wayside over the gruelling 1070km trek.
The 38-year-old "musher" is the first Czech and indeed the first woman outside Norway to finish this race. It took her almost nine days, with occasional stops for food and a precious few hours of sleep. Plus, of course, time out to feed her huskies. Jana, like all the others, started off with the maximum allowed number of 14 dogs (to finish you must be pulled by at least six of your dogs). "My food was being prepared by my team, which had been waiting in a camper van at the respective checkpoints," she explains. "But according to the rules of the race, dogs can only be taken care of by the participants themselves."
Roughly half of the dogs pulling Jana’s sled were females. "Bitches usually have less strength but on the other hand tend to be more intelligent", she says, news which would no doubt please Heidi, Becky, Pepina and Kaea but annoy Derik, Dustin, Danny and Buster. (To see their loveable mutt mugshots, visit www.huskies.cz)
The Czech champ raised eyebrows upon her arrival in Norway, not only because she was from central Europe, but because she was the only participant to use a pack of purebred Siberian huskies. "In Scandinavia, the mushers gave up racing with such dogs some 20 years ago and have since been using Alaskan huskies which are crossbreeds," explains Jana. She adds that the latter are faster and more hardy, but have thinner coats so they can succumb to the freezing temperatures more quickly.
So what matters most when you have to race more than 1000km in snow-covered plains of northern Europe? "All the time you must keep an eye on your dogs. If one of them becomes too tired, you must react quickly. Their lives are in your hands after all. On occasions, I’ve had to put an exhausted dog on the sled with me just to continue the race."
Jana trains in the mountains in the Czech Republic, but when there’s no snow she rides a wheel cart instead of a sled to maintain her and her dogs’ training levels. After the hectic winter, the dogs have a intricate programme of relaxing and training, balancing the warmer weather with their abilities to race. "We can sometimes go out in August, but only in the mornings when the temperature does not yet exceed 15°C," she explains.
"When I had arrived in Norway, the locals were even asking whether we also have snow in the Czech Republic, but I retorted by saying there was actually more of it in the mountains where I lived, just before I left, than there was in Norway!"
The truth is that the north Bohemian hills of Jizerské Hory (where Jana, a former cross-country ski champion, was born and has spent all her life) to some extent resemble the Norwegian north. This is because they form a plateau that offers the perfect conditions for training husky dogs.
At this point, I couldn’t help asking Jana a somewhat delicate question but one that had been on my mind – does she have to stop when one of her dogs (or even several at the same time!) need to. relieve themselves? "They know how to do it and still continue running," she laughs.
Jana has twice won the European Dog Sled Championship, in 2005 in Austria and two years later in Italy, but doesn’t plan to take part again. "Once you experience the thrill of a large race, in my case the Finnmarkslopet, your eyes are set solely on Alaska where the Iditarod, at 1600km the longest in the world, is held. That’s my next, biggest and most exciting challenge. It’ll test myself and my dogs to our maximums. I can’t wait!"
"I talked to Jana in a hotel in the Jizerské mountains where this musher lives – she couldn’t arrive earlier than 7pm because had to feed her 23 dogs first! That’s a lot of dog food." WIZZ writer Lubomír Sedlák
