The excitement of the Iditarod doesn’t end until the last musher crosses the Burled Arches in Nome. But the fever pitch is building to crown the 2014 Iditarod Champion for sure!
When Team Kaiser Pit Crew boarded the Jet to Anchorage at 8, Jeff King seemed to have the race under control. Well as our turbulent flight arrived in Anchorage, it was no match to the turbulence of the race up near the Safetly.
As the Jet pulled into the gate, my phone started to buzz, and Buzz, and BUZZ! Tiffany Tony is Screaming in my Ear- SHE’S PASSED HIM!!!
Aliy had passed Jeff? Naw, I said, that can’t be true.
Apparently it is.
Whatever the reason, Aliy and her Team were into the Safety checkpoint and Jeff has not made it there. The winds now near Safety are Brutal. Reports have it close to 45mph. It’s bad enough that Sebastian Schnuelle said he’s just not going back out there to check.
My phone wasn’t the only phone ringing. As I called Myron Angstman, he also had a hot hand from fielding calls. I got a call in and he said this has happened before– The Finish has had it’s lore of exciting times in the last bit of the race.
- A determined Libby Riddles charging alone into an arctic storm to snatch the 1985 championship in a race that grabbed the attention of theworld and catapulted her from the cold runners of a dog sled into the warm spotlight of international celebrity.
- A nearly possessed Rick Swenson leading his team through a wintery hell on an 80-mile, win-or-die march from White Mountain to Nome tosteal from the race leaders an unprecedented fifth Iditarod victory in 1991.
- Larry “Cowboy” Smith pushing himself and his dogs to break trail for days in 1983, hoping for a storm behind to seal a victory, only to be chaseddown by teams using the trail he’d left.
- A brave Herbie Nayokpuk, “The Shishmaref Cannonball,” futilely trying to fight his way through a blizzard to victory in 1982 while everyoneelse sat out the weather in the safety of Shaktoolik on the coast of the Bering Sea. Beaten by the storm, Nayokpuk barely struggled back alive afterhours out on the sea ice.
- An exhausted Dick Mackey and a trail-weary Swenson staggering as they ran side-by-side toward the finish line on Nome’s Front Street in 1978.The Iditarod’s lone photo-finish ended in confusion when Mackey’s was the first dog to cross the finish line, but Swenson’s was the first sled.