The race officially gets underway in Willow March 10, but training and preparations for the race is a constant, and a hot young contender among 62 entries to date is 26-year-old Jamaican Oswald "Newton" Marshall.

One of 19 rookies who signed up for the 2010 event, Marshall finished 13th out of a field of 29 mushers in last year's Yukon Quest. For his perseverance despite the odds, race officials awarded Marshall the Challenge of the North Award for that 1,000-mile race.

In preparation for the Yukon Quest, Marshall trained with Hans Gott, a native of Austria who has lived in British Columbia, Canada, since 1990 and won the Yukon Quest three times. Now, in preparation for his first Iditarod run, Marshall will train with three-time Iditarod champion Lance Mackey of Fairbanks.

"Newton is no rookie," said Mackey. "He is a 1,000-mile race veteran. I'm not going to have to teach him a whole heck of a lot. He knows how to take care of the dogs."

Mackey said he agreed to train Marshall after a call from a friend and business associate of Marshall who was inquiring about finding someone to train the Jamaican for the Iditarod.

His incentives, Mackey said, include offsetting some of his own race expenses, getting a team of his young dogs through the race and "the satisfaction of being the only person in history to lead a Jamaican to Nome.

"If he keeps up with me, great," said Mackey. "I'd love to send him back to Jamaica with a nice paycheck."

Marshall, an energetic young man whose job in Jamaica includes training rescued dogs, already has good financial backing from Jimmy Buffett's Margueritaville, Chukka Caribbean Adventures, Canada's Westjet Adventures, Columbia sportswear and others.

He is also affiliated with the International Federation of Sleddog Sports Inc., the Jamaican Society for the Prevention of Cruelty Against Animals and the International Sled Dog Racing Association.

"The team he will be driving is capable of doing well, capable of the top 20, " Mackey said. "And he is young and eager to learn. I'm going to do as much as I can to cram on him as much information as possible. He's a nice kid and the more I can do to help promote our sport and grab people's attention, my job is done. It's a simple way for me to contribute to the sport."

And it's a tradition in the Mackey family. Mackey's father, Dick Mackey, won the Iditarod in a photo finish in 1978 and his brother, Rick, was the 1983 champion.

On Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, 1984 Iditarod champion Dean Osmar, the father of Iditarod musher and Yukon Quest champion Tim Osmar, will work with equal enthusiasm to prepare rookie musher Wattie McDonald of Stonehaven, Scotland, for the 2010 Iditarod.

"He's good with the dogs, knows how to take care of dogs," said the elder Osmar, owner of Alaska Personal Journeys, dog mushing adventures through the Caribou Hills near the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

McDonald trained last year with Osmar in Clam Gulch with a team Osmar supplied to run two Iditarod qualifying races, the Tustumena 200 and the Taiga 300.

McDonald, 44, works in the offshore oil industry. He has 10 Siberian huskies at home on the outskirts of Stonehaven, a coastal town south of Aberdeen, Scotland. He got his first taste of the Iditarod when he came to Alaska to watch the 2008 start. It was a 25th wedding anniversary trip for him and his wife, Wendy. That hooked him, he said.

Despite his enthusiasm, he had a challenge in training in snow, said Osmar.

"He was pretty clueless when he got here," Osmar said. "He had been on a sled only once or twice in his life before. But he's determined. He really wants to get it done."

Such determination just goes to show how exciting the Iditarod is, said Chas St. George, a spokesman for the Iditarod Trail Committee in Wasilla, who applauds the cooperative effort of Iditarod veterans to train - albeit for a fee - hopeful race rookies.

"We are very excited about both of these rookies," St. George said.

The list of 62 contenders who have signed up so far for Iditarod 2010 "is one of the strongest fields we've had," St. George said.

First place in the 2010 race is up for grabs, said St. George. It could be a fourth win for Mackey, but there are lots of other serious contenders, including Yukon Quest winner Aliy Zirkle of Two Rivers, Sebastian Schnuelle of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and Dallas Seavey of Seward.

Schnuelle, a soft-spoken dog sled tour operator and a native of Wuppertal, Germany, won the Yukon Quest in 2009. Seavey, 22, is the son of 2004 Iditarod champion Mitch Seavey.

The younger Seavey, whose grandfather Dan Seavey ran the Iditarod with race founder Joe Redington Sr., also is the owner/manager of WildRide Sled Dog Rodeo, a visitor attraction in Anchorage. He and his wife, Jan, are both veterans of Iditarod 2009.