By Dispatch staff

March 20, 2012

Iditarod 2012 is finally over. After more than 16 days on the trail, Jan Steves was the last musher to get her dog-sledding team across the finish line in Nome, Alaska.

DeeDee Jonrowe heads down the Yukon River after leaving the Ruby checkpoint of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Friday, March 9, 2012. (AP Photo/Marc Lester, Anchorage Daily News)

She was beaten by 52 other teams in the race, and only just a few minutes behind Bob Chlupach.
In all 66 teams started the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race. Thirteen teams scratched.
Steves, 55, of Edmonds, Wash., crossed the finish line at 2:57 a.m. to take the Red Lantern award.
Other honors were announced at the finishers’ banquet in Nome:

• Pen Air Spirit of Alaska Award — Aliy Zirkle
• GCI Dorothy G. Page Halfway Award — Jim Lanier
• Wells Fargo Bank Alaska Gold Coast Award — Aliy Zirkle
• Nome Kennel Club Fastest Time from Safety to Nome Award — Mike Williams, Jr.
• Horizon Lines Most Improved Musher Award — Rohn Buser
• Jerry Austin Rookie of the Year — Brent Sass
• Fred Meyer Sportsmanship Award — Lance Mackey
• ExxonMobil Mushers Choice Award — Dan Seavey
• Northern Air Cargo Herbie Nayokpuk Memorial Award — Michelle Phillips
• Golden Clipboard Award — Community of Nulato
• Golden Stethoscope Award — Ruth Kothe, DVM and Tanja Kruse, DVM
• Alaska Airlines Leonhard Seppala Humanitarian Award — DeeDee Jonrowe
• City of Nome Lolly Medley Golden Harness Award Winner — Guinness — Dallas Seavey Lead Dog
• Northern Air Cargo Four Wheeler Drawing Winner — Peter Kaiser

The Anchorage Daily News contributed to this report. Visit the paper at www.adn.com

By Dispatch staff

March 19, 2012

Even though Dallas Seavey won the Iditarod on Wednesday, March 14, the race is still on.

The last two racers are making their way to Nome as you read this.

Still in the race are rookie Jan Steeves of Washington state and Bob Chlupach of Willow, Alaska. Both racers are expected to finish soon.

Upon finishing the race, both will earn a coveted Iditarod Belt Buckle. The person who finishes last will earn the Red Lantern award, a prize given to the last-place finisher as a testament to their stick-to-it attitude.

By Dispatch staff

March 14, 2012

Mushers always pose with their lead dogs under the burled arch in Nome, Alaska, after winning the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

When Dallas Seavey won Tuesday, he posed with Diesel and Guiness, but he could have used a little more podium space.

Dallas Seavey holds his leaders, Diesel, left, and Guiness after he arrived at the finish line to claim victory in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Nome, Alaska, on Tuesday, March 13, 2012. Seavey is the youngest musher to win the nearly 1,000-mile race across Alaska. (AP Photo/Marc Lester, Anchorage Daily News)

“I had five lead dogs on this team, and I had to have every single one of them to do their parts of the race,” Seavey said shortly after becoming the youngest musher to win the race in its 40-year history.

Seavey turned 25 on March 4, the day the race officially started north of Anchorage. He was the first musher to reach Nome, his nine dogs trotting under the famous burled-arch finish line in the Bering Sea coastal community at 7:29 p.m. Tuesday.

Some dogs are better in bad weather, others when speed is needed.

Guiness was only lead for a short bit of the race, but earned the podium spot because of her sure-footedness on glacier ice near the Rohn checkpoint.

The glare ice combined with windy conditions swept many mushers into driftwood.

“I stopped in Rohn, took her booties off so she’d have a little more traction, and we drove right there like I had a little remote control lead dog up front,” Seavey said.

“She could have saved me hours in that one short stretch right there.”

Seavey described his dog team as a team that had the ability to win the Iditarod, but not a team that could win the race “no matter what.”

He said it was a fragile team, but a perfect team if built correctly.

“We spent most of the race building a monster, a dog team that could not be stopped,” he said.

Dallas Seavey reaches the finish line to claim victory in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Nome, Alaska, on Tuesday, March 13, 2012. Seavey is the youngest musher to win the nearly 1,000-mile race across Alaska. (AP Photo/Marc Lester, Anchorage Daily News)

But it required exercising a lot of patience, holding back the young team until it was time to set them loose.

“By the end of the race, we were ready to start using that stored energy,” Seavey said.

Staying first: Once he did take command of the race, at the Unalakleet checkpoint, he said it took every bit of the dogs’ ability — not to mention his own — to fend off mushers Aliy Zirkle and Aaron Burmeister.

“They had phenomenal teams out there,” Seavey said of his main competitors. “I’m very impressed with those guys and excited to race with them in future years.”

Zirkle finished the Iditarod second, and Ramey Smyth came in third. Burmeister finished fourth.

The mutual admiration between Seavey and Zirkle was evident when she addressed fans at the Nome Convention Center, and invited Seavey on stage with her.

“Dallas ran a really good race,” Zirkle said. “There’s a lot of people who I’m sure are looking at all the Ps and Qs of how this race was run. I can tell you the one thing that Dallas and I did, we watched our dogs and we run our dogs, and I really respect that out of you, Dallas.

“I would rather still have the trophy,” she joked.

Several Seaveys: The race was a Seavey family affair this year, with three generations of Seavey men in the race.

His father, 52-year-old Mitch, was running in seventh place.

Dallas’ 74-year-old grandfather, Dan, is running in his fifth Iditarod to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Iditarod Trail. His trip to Nome is being sponsored by the Iditarod Historic Trail Alliance to highlight the rich history of the trail.

“It’s kind of what we do,” Dallas Seavey said when asked about that legacy.

Both of the younger Seaveys are extremely competitive.

When asked if it was bittersweet that his dad wasn’t in Nome to see his finish, he said he wished Mitch Seavey could have been there but joked it might not have worked out so well for the two.

“If I had to pick between being here first and having him here for the finish, I’ll see him at Christmas,” Dallas Seavey said.

Seavey is a former Alaska high school wrestling champion also spent a year at the U.S. Olympic Training Center before turning his attention back to dogs.

Mitch Seavey was the 2004 champion.

Two of 1978 winner Dick Mackey’s sons have also won, Rick Mackey in 1983 and Lance Mackey from 2007 to 2010.

For being first to Nome, Seavey wins $50,400 and a new truck.

Sixty-six teams began the race on March 4. Twelve mushers have scratched.

Reported by MARK THIESSEN of the Associated Press from NOME, Alaska.

By Dispatch staff

March 14, 2012

Pat Moon says he didn’t do anything that any other Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race musher wouldn’t have done; he just happened to be the guy who scratched.

Moon is being credited by a family with saving a child who was severely hurt in a sledding accident in Ruby on Sunday.

A leader in Pat Moon's dog team tugs at its harness during the official start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Willow, Alaska, on Sunday, March 4, 2012. (AP Photo/Anchorage Daily News, Bill Roth)

Moon had just scratched and was headed to the checkpoint in Ruby. “They weren’t having any fun,” he said of the team, which was beat up from tough winter training in Unalakleet.

The Park Ridge, Ill., musher walked to the checkpoint to fill out the paperwork to scratch. About 20 minutes later a woman came in looking for a village police officer.

The woman said her son was sledding, and couldn’t stop before slamming into a parked snowmachine, according to an email sent to an Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race official by the wounded boy’s aunt.

He “split his head open pretty good,” said Moon, whose had EMT training as an firefighter in Chicago.

The woman asked if anyone at the musher checkpoint could attend her son.

“I said, ‘I might be able to help. I’m not an emergency room doctor, but I can look at it,’” Moon told The Associated Press by cellphone from Unalakleet.

He said the boy suffered from a pretty significant head laceration. He was able to clean the wounds and put in butterfly sutures on the face and head.

“When he got to the house, he calmed everyone down, stopped the bleeding, cleaned the cut, and applied what was needed to help stop the bleeding and hold the face together,” the boy’s aunt said in the email. The family has asked not to be identified.

“Without Pat, we would have lost a family member,” she wrote.

Moon played down his role in the boy’s care. “There’s a finite point of what I can do. I’m just kind of a dog musher,” he said.

He also said he did nothing extraordinary.

“I would venture that any of the other 65 participants in in the race would have done the same thing. I just happened to be the one standing there.”

Reported by MARK THIESSEN of the Associated Press from NOME, Alaska

By Dispatch staff

March 13, 2012

Dallas Seavey held a slight lead in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Monday night, but Aliy Zirkle was close on his heels as the leaders drew closer to the finish line.

Dallas Seavey poles and kicks on the trail before reaching Elim, Alaska, during the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Monday, March 12, 2012. (AP Photo/Anchorage Daily News, Marc Lester)

Not far off the pace were Ramey Smyth and Aaron Burmeister.

“They know at this point they have got to keep really close,” said race spokeswoman Erin McLarnon.

All four were on the trail out of Elim. Seavey, the son of 2004 champion Mitch Seavey, spent just six minutes at that checkpoint and dropped a dog, leaving him with nine.

Zirkle spent nearly two hours in Elim and dropped two dogs, leaving her with 10.

Mushers try to stay within striking distance of the leader at this point in the nearly 1,000 mile race from Anchorage to Nome. That’s because mushers are required to rest their teams for eight hours in White Mountain before heading the 77 miles to the finish line.

The closer the top teams can stay to the leader going into White Mountain the better chance they have of winning.

The race: Sixty-six mushers began the race March 4. The winner will receive $50,400 and a new truck. The total purse of $550,000 will be shared by the first 30 finishers.

This year’s winner likely won’t break defending champion John Baker’s record-breaking time of 8 days, 18 hours and 46 minutes, McLarnon said. It appears the race leaders are moving about two hours slower this year.

McLarnon said she expects the race winner to cross the finish line sometime Tuesday.

Zirkle had been leading until Seavey — described by his father as “fiercely competitive” — made a move and erased her more than two-hour lead with what was a faster-moving team. But Zirkle’s team gained on Seavey’s coming to Elim.

Drop outs: Several teams scratched and one was withdrawn Sunday. They included four-time champion Jeff King who scratched after his dogs didn’t want to go the last few miles into the checkpoint at Unalakleet and were brought in by snowmachine. McLarnon said it appeared King’s team had a stomach ailment.

Race officials withdrew Jake Berkowitz in Unalakleet after he cut his hand while trying to separate two blocks of frozen fish to snack his dogs.

“It just sounded like the knife slipped,” McLarnon.

Mitch Seavey met the same fate last year when he nearly sliced off a finger opening a bale of bedding straw for his dogs. He was in sixth place late Monday.

Jake Berkowitz removes booties from his team with an injured left hand in Unalakleet, Alaska, during the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Sunday, March 11, 2012. Berkowitz scratched from the race Sunday. (AP Photo/Marc Lester, Anchorage Daily News)

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Reported by MARY PEMBERTON and MARK THEISSEN of the Associated Press from NOME, Alaska, and ANCHORAGE, Alaska.