Dallas Seavey wins Iditarod in record time

NOME — As race finishes go, this one is for the record books.

Race fans awoke to learn that Dallas Seavey, 26, of Willow, after running in the top 20 for much of the 2014 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, had notched his second win in three years early Tuesday morning.

That’s not the direction the race seemed headed late Monday night.

Jeff King’s team had been first out of White Mountain, with nearly a three-hour lead on Seavey’s team and Aliy Zirkle’s team running in second. Seavey was in third, several hours behind the two frontrunners.

But when the Willow musher blew threw Safety around 1 a.m., March 11 he didn’t know that howling winds and blowing snow between the Topkok Hill and Safety had forced the four-time champ to scratch 3.7 miles from checkpoint, or that Aliy Zirkle’s team was in Safety resting from the ferocious blow.

“When we hit the very bottom of the Topkok Hills, on the beach it was dead calm and I’d never seen it like that before. That’s scary something’s not — I don’t know weather that well — but something is not right,” Seavey said during an interview in Nome after winning. “We went around the corner and for the next 30 miles it seemed like we were just getting crushed by some of the worst wind I’ve ever mushed in.”

The Seavey team pressed forward, relentless in the face of blinding snow and 75 mph winds that pushed them off the trail repeatedly and sent the team — musher, sled, dogs and all — sliding out of control across the ice, he said.

“I fell down more on this trip than I have in 10 years. It was, it was rough,” he said. “But we kept getting up and Hero, bless his heart, he just kept getting right back on his feet and pulling the other dogs with him. There were times we wouldn’t cover 100 feet and we’d get up and do it again. I was so impressed with those little dogs and their determination just to keep on trucking.”

After the race, Seavey told reporters he thought it was his dad, Mitch Seavey, hot on his heels from Safety to Nome.

Instead it was Zirkle’s team.

In Safety, when she caught wind of his exodus, Zirkle readied her team and gave chase 19 minutes later, finishing two minutes behind Seavey at 4:06 a.m.

En route to Nome the past three years father and son Mitch and Dallas Seavey have inked several marks in the record books as oldest, youngest and now fastest teams to win the race.

And for the last three years Zirkle’s team has finished in the No. 2 spot to one or the other of the two Seaveys.

Last year it was Mitch Seavey who fended off a challenge from the scrappy Two Rivers team that has won the Yukon Quest for the past two years with Zirkle’s partner Allen Moore on the runners.

Zirkle’s team was first to reach the Bering Sea coast and led the race until King’s team took the lead on the run to Shaktoolik. He led through White Mountain, but scratched before reaching Safety.

Dallas Seavey’s win set a new race record, finishing in eight days, 13 hours and four minutes. Zirkle and Mitch Seavey also finished ahead of the old fastest time — eight days, 18 hours, 46 minutes — logged by John Baker in 2011.

The race is far from over though. Another 50 teams are still out on the trail between Kaltag and Nome. The top 20 teams are all into Elim.

The top 20 Tuesday morning were: 4 Joar Leifseth Ulsom; 5 Sonny Lindner; 6 Martin Buser; 7 Aaron Burmeister; 8 Hans Gatt; 9 Ray Redington Jr.; 10 Jessie Royer; 11 Michael Williams Jr.; 12 Ken Anderson; 13 Matt Failor; 14 John Baker; 15 Robert Sorlie; 16 Peter Kaiser; 17 Richie Diehl; 18 Wade Marrs; 19 Michelle Phillips; and 20 Abbie West.

Contact Heather A. Resz at 352-2268 or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.