The window for signing up teams for the Kluane-Chilkat bike race is now a matter of days.

Race coordinator Mike Kramer said the June 18 relay race between Haines Junction, Y.T., and Haines reached its cap of 1,200 team riders within eight days of opening March 15, with some teams signing up before 5 a.m.

“It’s great that the event has become so popular but it’s heartbreaking to get an email from somebody who’s done the race for years and find they missed the deadline,” Kramer said.

In previous years, registration filled up in three weeks.

Kramer attributed the accelerated registration to numbers of riders in previous years who have missed the deadline. “This year they had their alarms and phones set.”

Solo riders can continue to register until May 13. “In theory, there are as many solos as people want to ride,” Kramer said.

He explained that the 1,200-rider cap is set to limit the number of vehicles on the road, a safety consideration. More solos are allowed on the premise that solo riders tend to be the most skilled and represent few support vehicles, Kramer said.

The number of support vehicles appears to be dropping, which is good news to organizers, who said teams reported using 663 vehicles in 2014 and only 450 last year.

Event organizers are hoping to allow more participants in next year’s 25th anniversary ride. “We’ve also discussed how to have the event without any (team) cars. That would involve a lot of buses and a lot of shuttling riders. But we could conceivably have thousands of riders.”

A change this year is that a Dalton City salmon barbecue that coincides with race day is included in a racer’s participation fee.

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