WHITE MOUNTAIN -- The man who lives a life of danger asked his Iditarod dog team to go too fast too soon and in the end it cost him his dream, making him the second Scot to scratch.

Down to six dogs here Friday, with key leader El Toro the last to falter, 24-year-old, freckle-faced Scotsman John Stewart dropped out of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Stewart is a diver who works underwater construction in the North Sea. Other than combat military, it is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. The upside is that this dangerous line of work pays well.

The income allowed Stewart to spend $40,000 leasing a dog team from and training with four-time Iditarod champ Doug Swingley in Lincoln, Mont. But Stewart is no newbie to sled dog racing.

He's been running dogs since he was six, although mainly in front of carts. His parents, Alan and Fiona, run the Cairngorm Dog Sled Centre on Rothiemurchus Estate. The Stewarts are well known among the small clique of dug mushers in the British Isles, where John is a Scottish and British sprint champion.

His racing, however, has not been limited to the islands. John has raced all over the world. Not to mention training with, and handling for, the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race champion Hans Gatt and Anchorage Fur Rendezvous World Champion Egil Ellis.

And were that not enough, he and his father helped pioneer sled-dog cart rides for tourists in Jamaica. That eventually led to the birth of the Jamaica Dogsled Team, sponsored by singer Jimmy Buffett. Jamaican team musher Newton Marshall, 27, grabbed international headlines when he finished the Iditarod in 47th place on Friday.

There will be no headlines for John.

When Marshall crossed under the burled arch that marks the finish line for the 1,000-mile race from Anchorage to Nome, Stewart was well back down the trail along the Bering Sea coast nursing a team decimated by injuries and cold. It was a radical shift from the way his race began.

"They were so out of control at the start, I thought I was going to destroy my brake'' trying to hold them back, he said. Early on, he was up running toward the front of the race. He was chasing a big Iditarod dream.

"I hope to do well in the 'rookie' section for first timers and finish the race in around 11 days,'' he told his local newspaper, the Strathspey & Badenoch Herald, prior to the Iditarod start. "I want to get my ... entry fee back and, hopefully, pick something else up."

He would later confess to even larger aspirations. Swingley, he said, had given the young Scot a schedule for running a 10-day Iditarod. A 10-day Iditarod would have been put John close to a top-20 finish. Fit and small, John had a vision of himself as a potential European sled-dog jockey in the style of four-time Iditarod champ Jeff King from Denali Park.