ANKERAGE, Alaska — Dallas Seavey overcame a moose kill and time penalty to win Tuesday’s Iditarod, a record-breaking sixth championship in the world’s most famous sled dog race.
Seavey drove his team half a block off the Bering Sea ice into the frozen streets of Nome to pass under the famous studded arch finish line, a triumphant moment in a race marred by the deaths of three sled dogs, including two on Sunday, and serious injury to another.
The deaths prompted an animal rights group to once again call for an end to the legendary endurance race, in which a team of dogs pull a sled through the Alaskan wilderness.
Seavey, 37, becomes the winningest musher in the 51-year history of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which takes teams over two mountain ranges, over the Yukon River and along the frozen edges of the Bering Sea, just south of the Arctic Circle .
Fans poured out of bars along Front Street to cheer on Seavey, whose team was escorted by a police car with flashing lights. A former mayor once compared the atmosphere in Nome before the Iditarod finish to that of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but with dogs.
Such a momentous victory got off to a rough start for Seavey after his team became tangled in a moose on the trail just hours after the start of the Iditarod.
Seavey’s dog Faloo was injured before Seavey shot and killed the moose with a handgun. The racing rules require that any large game animal killed in defense of life or property be gutted before the musher continues.
Seavey told officials he gutted the moose as best he could. Ultimately, however, he was given a two-hour time penalty for spending just 10 minutes gutting the moose, officials said.
The time penalty did not cost Seavey the race and he left the penultimate checkpoint on Tuesday morning with a healthy three-hour lead over his nearest competitor.
Seavey’s name is all over the Iditarod record book. In 2005, he became the youngest musher to compete in the race, and in 2012, the youngest champion.
Seavey also won Iditarod championships in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2021. He was previously tied with now-retired musher Rick Swenson with five titles each. Swenson won the Iditarod in 1977, 1979, 1981, 1982 and 1991.
Seavey’s family history is deeply intertwined with the Iditarod. His grandfather, Dan Seavey, helped organize and direct the first Iditarod in 1973, and his father, Mitch Seavey, is a three-time champion.
Dallas Seavey almost took a different path in the sports world. He became the first Alaskan to win a U.S. national wrestling championship when he captured the Gregco-Roman 125-pound title in 2003 and trained for a year at the U.S. Olympic Training Center before concussions led him back to mushing.
In addition to the moose encounter and the time penalty, this year’s race had other controversial issues.
After going five years without a dog dying during the race, two separate teams collapsed and died on Sunday, and another died on Tuesday. Attempts to resuscitate all three dogs were unsuccessful.
Mushers Issac Teaford, of Salt Lake City, and Hunter Keefe, of Knik, both scratched voluntarily or they would have risked removal by the race marshal because dogs in their care died during the race, according to Iditarod rules. The third dog, a three-year-old male named Henry from newcomer Calvin Daugherty’s team, collapsed about 10 miles before reaching the checkpoint in the village of Shaktoolik. A necropsy is scheduled, and Daugherty was also scratched.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Iditarod’s loudest critic, called on officials to end the race.
“The Iditarod is Alaska’s shame,” PETA Vice President Tracy Reiman said in a statement. “How many more dogs have to die before this stops? Dogs lives are worth more than this.”
Before the race even started, officials disqualified Eddie Burke Jr., last year’s rookie of the year, as well as 2022 champion Brent Sass, as allegations of violence against women threw the Iditarod into disarray.
Race officials disqualified Burke on February 19. But the state of Alaska subsequently dropped charges alleging he strangled his then-girlfriend in 2022, and the Iditarod Trail Committee reinstated him. He eventually withdrew because he had rented his dogs to other mushers when he was disqualified and could not assemble his team in time for the race.
The committee also disqualified Sass with no explanation other than pointing out a rule governing personal and professional conduct, and race officials declined to discuss it at a pre-race media briefing.
Sass said in a Facebook post that he was “extremely disappointed” and that the “anonymous allegations” against him were “completely false.” No criminal cases against Sass appear in Alaska’s online court records.
The race started on March 2 for 38 mushers with a ceremonial run in Anchorage. The competitive start took place the next day 120 kilometers north of Anchorage. Since then, seven mushers have withdrawn.