Mitch Seavey became the oldest winner, a two-time Iditarod champion, when he drove his dog team under the burled arch in Nome on Tuesday evening, March 12, 2013. Race marshal Mark Nordman is at right. (AP Photo/The Anchorage Daily News, Bill Roth)

Mitch Seavey, 53, outdueled Aliy Zirkle on the final stretch of the Iditarod, becoming the oldest champion in the history of the 1,000-mile race.

The Sterling musher steadily pulled away from Zirkle on the 67-mile run from White Mountain, where just 13 minutes separated the two mushers in the afternoon.

Led by Tanner, a 6-year-old, orange-brown husky who is a kennel favorite, Seavey coasted down Nome’s Front Street at 10:39 p.m.

“I gotta go congratulate my lead dog Tanner,” Seavey said after his team came to a stop. “He’s probably the best I’ve ever had.

“Tanner is happy to be a sled dog and he makes it look easy.”

Seavey’s winning margin of 23 minutes, 39 seconds made it the fourth-closest race in Iditarod history. Seavey finished in 9 days, 7 hours, 39 minutes, 56 seconds. Zirkle finished in 9 days, 8 hours, 3 minutes, 35 seconds.

“I was going for it,” Zirkle said, “but that slippery little sucker, I couldn’t catch him.”

As she traveled from White Mountain to Nome, Zirkle watched Seavey’s winding tracks in the snow. She tried to guess if the musher was speeding up or slowing down based on whether the tracks stayed smack in the middle of the trail or drifted to the side.

“And you don’t know,” she said. “But it’s kind of fun to guess.”

“And then for about 30 miles of the trail we’re high above treeline in these rolling mountains, and every time I would come up over the hill I would see him coming back down the other side,” Zirkle said.

Zirkle, 43, said she thought she saw Seavey’s yellow sled after Safety, but it was just a hallucination.

Meantime, Seavey was imaging he was seeing Zirkle all across the tundra.

“I saw the raven Aliy, I saw the fuel tank Aliy. And the upside-down boat Aliy,” Seavey said. “Everything I was seeing back there I thought must be her … I would continue to scare myself that she was catching up to me.”

Zirkle’s time is the second fastest by a woman. Her time last year — 9 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes, 10 seconds — is the fastest.

“You’re gonna win this thing,” Seavey told the Two Rivers musher as he shook her hand.

OLDEST WINNER
Seavey replaced Jeff King as the Iditarod’s oldest champion. King, who was poised early Wednesday morning to claim third place, was 50 when he won his fourth victory in 2006.

Mitch’s son Dallas was 25 when he won last year’s race, giving the Seaveys the oldest and youngest champs in race history.

Both of those distinctions came at Zirkle’s expense. Dallas beat her by 59 minutes, 44 seconds last year.

Tuesday’s victory was the second for Mitch — he won his first in 2004 — and marked his 19th finish in 20 attempts.

“I hate to go off into the sunset knowing I only did it once in 20 tries,” he said, “so it’s sorta a validation.”

The finish was the 12th for Zirkle, who was hoping to drive her team to its second thousand-mile championship of the year. Nine of the 10 dogs she finished with — Quito, Olivia, Scruggs, Scout, Beemer, Nacho, Chica, Biscuit and Willie — helped Zirkle’s husband, Allen Moore, win the Yukon Quest last month in Fairbanks.

“My dog team is my heart,” Zirkle said. “They’re my family and they’re fantastic.”
Seavey will collect $50,400 and a new pickup truck for his victory. Zirkle gets $47,100 for second place.

Mitch Seavey congratulates second place finisher Aliy Zirkle after she arrived in Nome. (AP Photo/The Anchorage Daily News, Bill Roth)

PATIENCE PAYS OFF
Seavey had to ward off both King and Zirkle in the last one-third of the race.

Patience paid off for him on Monday, when he resisted the urge to follow when King blew through Koyuk to temporarily claim the lead. Seavey stayed at the checkpoint for another three hours and was able to overtake King on the run to Elim.

He owned a 48-minute lead leaving Elim on Monday night, but Zirkle came on strong during the overnight run to White Mountain and sliced 35 minutes off his lead.

Seavey did himself no favors on that run — he twice fell asleep and fell off his sled, according a Facebook post by his son Danny Seavey.
‘RUN MY TUSH OFF’
Normally the 67 miles from White Mountain to Nome is a formality. If you get to White

Mountain with a comfortable lead, your only job is to avoid screw-ups during the roughly 10-hour trek to the finish.

Zirkle’s plan?

“Run my tush off,” she said early Tuesday as the leaders rested in White Mountain.

Zirkle was trying to become the third woman to win the race and the first since Susan Butcher’s final championship in 1990.

Her sled dogs are a small, pixie-like team that descended from a favorite leader named Cha-Cha, are led by pink-nosed veteran Quito. (That’s short for Poquita, smallest of her litter of Spanish-named puppies.)

Though Zirkle trailed by a scant 13 minutes at White Mountain, King noted that even a lead of a few minutes there can hand the frontrunner the advantage over the final run west across rolling hills to the coast.

“You can get out of sight and the second team doesn’t have the advantage of drafting off you visually,” said King, who said he led DeeDee Jonrowe by about seven minutes out of White

Mountain en route to his 1993 title, which he won by more than 30 minutes.

Nome musher Aaron Burmeister like how Zirkle’s team looked in White Mountain.

“Aliy’s team’s coming together really nicely for her. And they’re really coming on strong here late in the race,” he said. “Mitch has been racing up with me at the front of the pack for a good portion of the race, back and forth. I know his team is pretty tuckered, about like mine right now. His are tuckered because they’ve been raced hard.”

But Jonrowe and King said they watched Seavey’s team along the trail and saw formidable dogs.

“I saw (the team) going into Grayling, on the Yukon a lot. Just powered through that wet, nasty, sludgy stuff,” Jonrowe said.

EARLY CONTENDERS FADE
While former champion Martin Buser of Big Lake led at many of the early checkpoints thanks to an unheard of 20-hour run to start the race, it was after his team came off the Yukon River that Seavey staked his move.

By Elim, what had looked like a Seavey-King duel became a Seavey-Zirkle duel. Zirkle rested her dogs for about an hour less than Seavey, cutting Seavey’s lead to 48 minutes.
Zirkle got even closer on the run to White Mountain. Her headlamp alerted Seavey that she was closing in.

“I knew she was coming. I saw her light after I left Elim, when we got to the mountains,” Seavey said. “Typically my team does well in the mountains and I didn’t see her anymore until we got here on Golovin Bay.”

The clang of church bells announced Seavey’s arrival to White Mountain at 5:11 a.m. Tuesday.

The musher was still unpacking at 5:24 a.m. when Zirkle slid to a stop, bouncing on her sled.

“Mitch is up for a race, aren’t ya?” Zirkle said to reporters — and a nearby Seavey — as she finished feeding her dogs.

“You calling me out?” Seavey said, heating water a few yards away. He was going to get his sneakers out for the finish, he joked.

“Can I borrow your sneakers? My boots are still wet and nasty from the rain,” Zirkle replied.

OUT OF WHITE MOUNTAIN
Hours later, snowmachines zoomed to the frozen Fish River as volunteers counted down to Seavey’s departure for Nome. Already, 11 teams were parked a few hundred yards from ski planes roaring for takeoff. Dallas and Mitch Seavey hunkered at the elder Seavey’s team.

“I don’t think I’m going to be catching up with you guys by any stretch of imagination. But I don’t think you’ll have to wait too long,” Dallas said of his ETA in Nome.

Under clear skies, Mitch resumed his race.

“Tanner! Gee! Line up!” he commanded his team of 10 dogs before driving off at 1:11 p.m.

Zirkle made last-minute inspections before following 13 minutes later. She walked down her line of dogs, rubbing their faces and checking collars. Once Zirkle was on the sled runners, she called to Quito, who began a whistling howl.

The musher and the rest of the team joined the chorus, then gave chase.

SAFE LEAD BY SAFETY
Late Tuesday, the pair was crossing the Bering Sea shore where coastal wind rakes the snow and Seavey and Tanner could be seen marching west toward Nome.

Quiot and Zirkle, kicking from the sled, followed about two miles down the trail.

By the time Seavey reached Safety, 49 miles from White Mountain and 18 miles from Nome according to the race’s GPS tracker, his lead had stretched to 25 minutes.

A race that looked too close to call just a few hours earlier belonged to him.

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Read more of the Junior Dispatch’s 2013 Iditarod coverage:

• Your primer on the 2013 Iditarod
• A look at the weather on the trail
• The starting lineup of the 2013 Iditarod
• Mushers blast out of Willow
• Nurse comes back to mushing
• A veteran returned the race after 27 years
• Mushers plan their stops along the Iditarod trail
• Martin Buser reveals his plan to win
• You won’t find big money in dog sled racing
• How music star Kid Rock helped a young musher
• Lance Mackey earns gold in Iditarod
• Martin Buser’s gamble to win
• Aily Zirkle shows her dominance
• Mitch Seavey starts to take control of the race
• A dog gets loose, and its musher forced to quit the race
• Lance Mackey’s struggles included loosing a tooth
• A look at the final hours of the race
• Mitch Seavey wins 2013 Iditarod (initial story)

Junior Dispatch also offered a series of “Fast-Facts” to help familiarize readers with the rules of the game:

• Iditarod Map and race primer
• A look at where the racers come from
• Previous winners in the race
• Stop-and-go racing
• The Passing game
• Beware the moose
• Earning a red lantern
• Husky alternatives
• Speedy delivery
• Sports in Nome
• Alaskans dominate
• What’s in a Nome?
• Animal Cruelty?
• The legend of Balto
• The legend of Togo
• More polar fun

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___
By KYLE HOPKINS and BETH BRAGG of the Anchorage Daily News from NOME, Alaska. (MCT)
(c)2013 the Anchorage Daily News (Anchorage, Alaska)
Visit the Anchorage Daily News (Anchorage, Alaska) at www.adn.com
Distributed by MCT Information Services

Mitch Seavey leaves White Mountain in Alaska, Tuesday, March 12, 2013, during the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. (AP Photo/The Anchorage Daily News, Bill Roth)

Mitch Seavey became the oldest winner and a two-time Iditarod champion when he drove his dog team under the burled arch in Nome on Tuesday evening, March 12, 2013. (AP Photo/The Anchorage Daily News, Bill Roth)

A 53-year-old former champion has won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race to become the oldest winner of Alaska’s grueling test of endurance.

Mitch Seavey and 10 dogs crossed the Nome finish line to cheering crowds at 10:39 p.m. Alaska time Tuesday.

“This is for all of the gentlemen of a certain age,” he said on a live stream posted to the Iditarod website after completing the race in temperatures just above zero. His race time in the 1,000-mile race was nine days, 7 hours and 39 minutes.

Seavey’s victory came after a dueling sprint against Aliy Zirkle, last year’s runner-up, along the frozen, wind-whipped Bering Sea coast. Zirkle crossed the finish line 24 minutes after her rival, who greeted her after a while.

“You did a good job,” Seavey told Zirkle as a camera crew filmed them. “You’re going to win this thing, probably more than once.”

Mitch Seavey  sits with his two lead dogs, Tanner, left and Taurus, right, at the Iditarod finish line in Nome, Alaska. (AP Photo/The Anchorage Daily News, Bill Roth)

Rest stops: At a news conference after the race Zirkle gave credit to her rival’s strategy.

“Mitch has this ability to sit on the sidelines and refuel because he knows he needs to refuel, while everyone else is zooming by,” she said. “It’s smart, and that’s probably why you won.”

Immediately after finishing, both mushers rushed to pet their dogs, with Seavey singling out his main leader, 6-year-old Tanner, posing for photos with the dog and another leader, Taurus, wearing yellow garlands.

Zirkle’s dogs wagged their tails as she praised them. “My dog team is my heart,” she said.

The pair jostled for the lead, with Zirkle never more than a few miles behind, in the final stretch.

“I just now stopped looking over my shoulder,” Seavey said after winning.

In the pack: Also trailing by a dozen or so miles was four-time champion Jeff King, who was followed by a cluster of contenders, including Seavey’s son, Dallas Seavey. The younger Seavey at age 25 last year became the youngest Iditarod winner ever, beating Zirkle to the finish line by one hour.

Mitch Seavey first won the Iditarod in 2004. Before his Tuesday night win, King had been the oldest Iditarod champion, winning his fourth race at age 50 in 2006.

The oldies were still stellar performers in a race that ended last year with a top field featuring many finishers in their 20s and 30, noted Iditarod race spokeswoman Erin McLarnon.

“Last year, we saw a lot of those youngsters in the top 10,” McLarnon said. “Some of those 45-plussers are taking back the lead this year. They are showing the young ‘uns what they can really do out there on that trail.”

Aliy Zirkle finished second in the Iditarod for the second consecutive year when her dog team crossed under the burled arch in Nome on Tuesday evening, March 12, 2013. (AP Photo/The Anchorage Daily News, Bill Roth)

Her effort: Zirkle, 43, had hoped to be only the third woman to win the race and the first since Susan Butcher won her fourth Iditarod in 1990. Before this year’s race, Zirkle noted the long time that had passed since a woman won.

“This is my 13th year, and I’ve wanted to win every year,” she said before the race, which began March 2 with 66 teams at a ceremonial start in Anchorage.

The competitive part of the race began the following day in Willow 50 miles to the north. Since then, the race changed leaders several times. Those at the front of the field included four-time champions Lance Mackey and Martin Buser, who later fell behind.

En route to Nome, the race turned into an aggressively contested run among veterans along an often punishing trail.

Conditions on the Yukon River required dogs to go through deep snow and navigate glare ice. Above-freezing temperatures also led to overflow along the trail, a potentially dangerous situation where water has pushed up through the ice and refrozen, creating a weak top layer of ice that teams and mushers can break through.

For reaching Nome first, Seavey wins $50,400 and a new 2013 Dodge Ram pickup truck. The rest of the $600,000 purse will be split among the next 29 mushers to cross the finish line under the famed burled arch on Front Street, a block from the sea.

___

Read more of the Junior Dispatch’s 2013 Iditarod coverage:

• Your primer on the 2013 Iditarod
• A look at the weather on the trail
• The starting lineup of the 2013 Iditarod
• Mushers blast out of Willow
• Nurse comes back to mushing
• A veteran returned the race after 27 years
• Mushers plan their stops along the Iditarod trail
• Martin Buser reveals his plan to win
• You won’t find big money in dog sled racing
• How music star  Kid Rock helped a young musher
• Lance Mackey earns gold in Iditarod
• Martin Buser’s gamble to win
• Aily Zirkle shows her dominance
• Mitch Seavey starts to take control of the race
• A  dog gets loose, and its musher forced to quit the race
• Lance Mackey’s struggles included loosing a tooth
• A look at the final hours of the race

Junior Dispatch also offered a series of “Fast-Facts” to help familiarize readers with the rules of the game:

• Iditarod Map and race primer
• A look at where the racers come from
• Previous winners in the race
• Stop-and-go racing
• The Passing game
• Beware the moose
• Earning a red lantern
• Husky alternatives
• Speedy delivery
• Sports in Nome
• Alaskans dominate
• What’s in a Nome?
• Animal Cruelty?
• The legend of Balto
• The legend of Togo
• More polar fun

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Reported by MARK THIESSEN and RACHEL D’ORO of the Associated Press from NOME, Alaska. Associated Press writer Rachel D’Oro reported from Anchorage. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/rdoro.
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Online:

http://iditarod.com

Mitch Seavey became a two-time Iditarod champion when he drove his dog team under the burled arch in Nome on Tuesday evening, Mar. 12, 2013. Leader Taurus looks out at the crowd gathered on Front Street. (BILL ROTH / Anchorage Daily News)

The 2004 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race champion, Mitch Seavey, is leading the race, but Aliy Zirkle, who finished second last year, is close behind as the race leaders prepare for a sprint to the finish line in Nome.

Cancer survivor Lance Mackey started the 2013 Iditarod with three of his original teeth. Now he’s down to two.

“I was drinking tea, eating fudge, listening to music, just cruising along,” the four-time champion said. As his dogs pulled him along the overflow-soaked Yukon River to Kaltag, Mackey bit something hard.

“Wow, that’s a weird-looking nut,” he thought.

Then he realized what had happened.

Mackey has been falling apart for some time. Radiation treatment for throat cancer discovered in 2001 led doctors to remove his top and bottom molars, he said. He must drink water constantly while on the runners of his sled because he can’t produce saliva. And he is down to nine fingers: A symptom of the nerve damage suffered from the treatment.

He lost the tooth was sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning, days before the finish of the race.

“That sucks,” he thought.

Four-time champion Lance Mackey prepares to take part in the ceremonial start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race Saturday, March 2, 2013, in Anchorage, Alaska. The competitive portion of the 1,000-mile race is scheduled to begin Sunday in Willow, 50 miles to the north. (AP Photo/Rachel D’Oro)

He put the tooth in his pocket. The pain came when he took a swig of Powerade.

Mackey mushed at least another 85 miles over 25 hours, including rest, to Unalakleet. Here, he visited a dental clinic and learned there was nothing to be done for him along the Iditarod trail.

The tooth had snapped off. The root must be removed, he said.

“They just gave me some antibiotics, which was the main concern. Penicillin and Tylenol 3,” Mackey said. “She said it was enough to get to Nome, but I already ate half of them.”

Only Mackey’s two front teeth remain, he said. The Two Rivers musher, who was in 14th place in the race Monday night, plans to have a gold tooth made to fill the latest gap.

“I don’t know if I have the heart to tell my mom,” he said. “It was her fudge.”
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Reported by KYLE HOPKINS of the Anchorage Daily News from UNALAKLEET, Alaska. (MCT)
(c)2013 the Anchorage Daily News (Anchorage, Alaska)
Visit the Anchorage Daily News (Anchorage, Alaska) at www.adn.com
Distributed by MCT Information Services

Canadian musher Gerry Willomitzer has been withdrawn from the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race after losing one of his dogs.

The 43-year-old from Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, was disqualified Sunday from the race in Shageluk.

Willomitzer’s dog got loose about 25 miles outside of the half-way point. Race officials say he waited more than a day while searching for the dog before learning that it had been found.

Willomitzer thought the dog was being taken to Shageluk, the next checkpoint in the race, and continued there, but the dog had been taken elsewhere.

Race rules require that mushers arrive at checkpoints with as many dogs as they had leaving the previous one. Officials decided that Willomitzer didn’t have enough time to go back and get the dog.

Reported by the Associated Press from SHAKTOOLIK, Alaska