Former reality TV star Jessie Holmes on Tuesday night cruised to a repeat victory in the Iditarod, the about 1,609km sled dog race in Alaska.
Holmes guided his dog team across the finish line in the old Gold Rush town of Nome, a Bering Sea coastal community.
The race started on March 8 in Willow, a day after the ceremonial start in Anchorage. The course took dog teams and their mushers over two mountain ranges, along the frozen Yukon River and across the unpredictable Bering Sea ice.
Photo: Anchorage Daily News via AP
Holmes, a former cast member on the National Geographic reality show Life Below Zero, is the third competitor in the 54-year history of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race to repeat the year after winning for the first time. The others were Susan Butcher in 1986-1987 and Lance Mackey in 2007-2008. Both went on to win four titles.
Holmes said before the Iditarod that this year’s race was the most important of his career.
“That’s hard to put that on yourself because you got to live with that pressure every day,” Holmes said. “And if I do not make it, it is going to absolutely crush me.”
He would pocket about US$80,000 for this year’s win, up from the US$57,000 he took home last year. This year’s purse was boosted by financial support from Norwegian billionaire Kjell Rokke, who participated in a newly created, noncompetitive amateur category.
Rokke reached Nome on Monday, under rules that allowed him to have outside support from a former Iditarod champ, flexible rest periods and to swap out dogs.
Holmes’ first Iditarod was in 2018. His seventh place finish earned him rookie of the year honors. He has raced in the Iditarod nine times, earning seven top 10 finishes, and has been in the top five the past five races.
He appeared for eight years on Life Below Zero, which chronicled the hardships of people living in rural Alaska.
Holmes used the money he earned from the show to buy better dogs and equipment, and also land near Denali National Park and Preserve. A carpenter by trade, he has carved his homestead in the wilderness, where his closest neighbor is about 48km away.
One dog died in this year’s race, a four-year-old female named Charly on musher Mille Porsild’s team, the Iditarod said in a statement on Tuesday. A necropsy is to be conducted.
Thirty-four competitive mushers started, matching the inaugural 1973 race for the second-fewest in race history. The retirements of many longtime mushers and the high cost of supplies, such as dog food, have kept the fields small this decade.
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