Veteran musher Dallas Seavey was the first to cross the Iditarod finish line in Nome, Alaska, on Tuesday at 5:16 p.m., coming from behind and beating out runner-up Matt Hall to win the 52nd running of the annual 975-mile race. He is the first-ever musher to win the Iditarod six times, and took home a cash prize of $55,000. This feat is doubly impressive considering that Seavey was delayed on March 4 when he killed a moose that had injured one of his dogs and received a 2-hour penalty for gutting it poorly.
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The penalty had little impact on Seavey’s progress, or his margin of victory. He beat Hall by over 4 hours and 40 minutes — the largest margin from an ensuing team of all the finishers at the time of publication. Another 11 teams are still racing, and seven have scratched. Seavey’s final time nine days, 2 hours, 16 minutes, and 8 seconds. Seavey finished the race with 10 dogs in harness; a female named Faloo was airlifted to Anchorage after the moose in question got tangled in the dogs’ traces. Although Seavey dispatched the moose with a handgun and field dressed it, as required per the race rules.
“This one was supposed to be hard,” Seavey told NBC News of his win. “It had to be special, it had to be more than just a normal Iditarod, and for me, it was.”
So far three dogs have died after they collapsed in the 2024 Iditarod; teams under Isaac Teaford, Hunter Keefe, and Calvin Daugherty each lost a dog. Teaford and Daughterty were rookie mushers and Keefe was in his second race, after finishing 11th last year. All three teams scratched following the episodes, as is required by race rules. Faloo, Seavey’s injured dog, was in critical condition following the moose attack but has since returned home and is recovering.
The last time an Iditarod dog died was in 2019; that death was a result of pneumonia that 5-year-old Oshi contracted during the race rather than collapse during the race, which caused all three of this year’s fatalities. Five dogs also died and eight were injured in collisions with snowmobilers during training runs for the 2024 Iditarod, prompting the August Foundation, a sled dog non-profit, to partner with the race and make high-visibility neon vests available for the dogs.
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PETA has demanded organizers to shut down the Iditarod once and for all, calling the race a “bloodsport” rather than “a feat of human resiliency.” The Iditarod race has been held since 1973, with two shorter races on a portion of the Iditarod Trail in 1967 and 1969. It was initially conceived to celebrate Alaska’s centennial in 1967.