Iditarod finish nears with Minnesotan in commanding lead

Musher Brent Sass is in the driver’s seat, on track to win his first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race

Musher Brent Sass was in the driver’s seat, on track to win his first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Tuesday.

Sass was the first musher early Tuesday to reach the checkpoint in Safety, which is only 22 miles (35 kilometers) from the finish line.

The 42-year-old native of Minnesota left the previous checkpoint in White Mountain Monday evening with a 2 ½ hour lead over the defending champion, Dallas Seavey. All mushers must take a mandatory eight-hour break in White Mountain before making the final push for the finish in Nome. Safety is the last checkpoint before the finish line.

“We stuck to our game plan and ran our own race, and we weren’t worried about anybody else around us,” Sass told Anchorage television station KTUU during his layover.

For his part, Seavey was resigned to runner-up status. He flatly told KTUU that he couldn’t win unless something goes wrong for Sass.

“I haven’t looked at the time, but isn’t he like three hours ahead?” Seavey said.

Seavey was attempting to become the race’s most decorated musher. He and Rick Swenson are tied with the most Iditarod victories at five.

He was still able to joke, saying: “We’ve got a pretty solid lead over third.”

The third place musher, Jessie Holmes, was about 50 miles (80 kilometers) behind Seavey.

The nearly 1,000-mile (1,609-kilometer) race across Alaska began March 6 just north of Anchorage. The route took mushers along Alaska’s untamed and unforgiving wilderness, including two mountain ranges, the frozen Yukon River and Bering Sea ice along the state’s western coastline.

This is the 50th running of the race, which started in 1973. This year's event began with 49 mushers, and five have dropped out along the trail.

Sass was the Iditarod’s rookie of the year in 2012 when he finished 13th. The next year he fell back to 22nd place, before skipping the 2014 race.

In 2015 he was disqualified when race officials found he had an iPod Touch with him on the trail, a violation of race rules banning two-way communication devices because the iPod Touch could connect to the Internet. He said he was clueless, and wanted his fans to know he had intention of cheating.

Sass placed 16th the following year before taking a three-year break from the Iditarod. In 2020, he placed fourth and was third last year.

Sass, who lives in the tiny area of Eureka, about a four-hour drive northwest of Fairbanks, had more success meanwhile in the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race.

He claimed titles in that 1,000-mile (1,609-kilometer) race between Fairbanks and Whitehorse, Yukon, in 2015, 2019 and 2020. This year, the race was shortened to smaller races on both sides of the border, with Sass winning both the 350-mile (563-kilometer) Alaska race and the 300-mile (483-kilometer) Canadian contest.