HOME – Brent Sass won the 50th Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, a first for a Eureka musher and three-time Yukon Quest champion.
Sass pulled into the finish line at Front Street in Nome at 5:38 a.m. Tuesday, completing his nearly 1,000-mile journey in 8 days, 14 hours, 38 minutes and 43 seconds.
The 42-year-old Minnesota native had 11 dogs in a team as he passed under the nylon arch to cheering, cheers and whistles from spectators lining the finish chute under still-dark skies.
“It’s amazing,” Sass said when asked about his first win. “It’s a dream come true.”
He was presented with a large check for $50,000 and was photographed with guides Morello and Slater. He said he was “super, super, super proud” of his dogs: “It’s all about them. They did a great job throughout the race.”
“Each of these dogs that I have raised from puppies and we have been working towards that goal all the time and here we are,” he said in a cracked voice. “This is madness.”
He had ice in his beard as he stepped off his sleigh and a wide grin on his face as he faced the cheering crowd. He described strong winds on the way from White Mountain to Nome, saying that “it was a lot of work, but a lot of fun.”
Sass’s father, Mark Sass, stood near the arch waiting for his son’s arrival before sunrise and hugged him at the finish line.
“He worked very, very, very hard for this,” said Mark Sass.
This year, 49 mushers entered the Iditarod and five have already been eliminated. Sassa’s closest and fiercest challenger, the five-time champion Dallas Seavey, closed the gap between the two early Tuesday but failed to overtake Sassa, who had held the lead since the middle of the race.
“Being able to keep him at bay for the entire race and compete against the best guy in the business makes this win all the sweeter,” Sass said.
Sivi, 35, arrived in Nome with seven dogs in a sled, an hour and eight minutes after Sassa. Seavey’s father, Mitch, is a three-time champion who competes this year, and his grandfather Dan competed in the first Iditarod in 1973. A win would make Dallas the record for most Iditarod wins, and he said he plans to retire from the race after this year.
Tuesday’s victory builds on Sassa’s third-place finish in 2021, his best result since entering his first Iditarod in 2012, when he finished 13th and won the Rookie of the Year award.
When he started to mumble, he intended to win a thousand-mile Yukon Quest and Iditarod. He’s been working on this goal for years and now he can finally check it off his list.
“It’s been an overwhelming amount of support that I’ve received across the state, around the world over the past six months,” Sass said Tuesday morning.
Born in Excelsior, Minnesota and raised in the Twin Cities, Sass came to Alaska in 1998 to attend college in Fairbanks, where he competed in cross-country skiing.
Sass lives and runs his Wild and Free nursery year-round on a homestead in Eureka, a remote area 150 miles from Fairbanks and 30 miles from the tiny town of Manly Hot Springs, the nearest community.
This year, Sass closed the homestead so he could live and train in a cabin near Fairbanks, in part because he had less housework while honing his dog sled and racing.
Four of the 14 dogs Sass started the Iditarod with this year are newbies who have never run in Nome. Its leaders, Slater and Morello, come from litters named after characters in Richard Linklater’s 1993 film Dazed and Confused and the Netflix show Orange Is the New Black, respectively.
Before the start of this year’s race, Sass described what it takes to win the Iditarod.
“A lot of things have to come together,” he said during the launch ceremony in Anchorage. “You have to have a lot of luck, you have to be ready and you have to play perfectly.”
This year’s Iditarod finish marks a return to Nome after last year’s route was changed to a reverse trail from Deshka Landing, near Willow, in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
At the finish line, Iditarod CEO Rob Urbach said getting to Nome is the essence of the race path.
“The energy here is amazing,” Urbach said after Sass’ victory.
Zacharias Hughes reported from Anchorage and Morgan Krakow reported from Nome. Mark Lester provided reporting from Anchorage.