Delta Force Spotlight – Richie Diehl

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Richie Diehl and his Number One Fan- Emerie

Ask anyone- Richie Diehl is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. A little shy, but once you talk to him, he immediately breaks into a nice easy going smile. The young musher from Aniak, Alaska, 100 or so miles upriver from Bethel has been competing and moving up the leaderboard every year. His dream has been to compete in the Iditarod and 2013 will be his rookie year.
Aniak is a different kind of place with different kinds of people. It is more like McGrath in many ways at is the hub for the smaller villages surrounding it and has daily scheduled air service to Anchorage. In some ways it is the best of scenarios– close to wilderness, but a plane ticket away from Anchorage. This contrasts the lives of the Williams’ who must travel by boat, snowmachine, or small plane to Bethel, and then get on the scheduled service.

Being from this small hub villages also offers Richie the advantage as well of being farther from the coast so his training area is usually pretty nice. This year especially, Pete and the Team camped out with the Diehls in Aniak so he could do some training as all of the Bethel snow was gone.

Richie’s Dad is a retired school teacher and his Mom runs the only restaurant in Aniak. Pete and Richie met at UAA as students and several years ago Richie came down and stayed with Kaiser’s while working construction. Having more work in Bethel, Richie now works construction every summer in Bethel.

I spoke with him just before he left on the trail-

[mejsaudio src=”http://kaiserracing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/RichiePre.mp3″]

 

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