The small turnout raises concerns about the future of an iconic race that has taken hits from the pandemic, climate change, inflation and loss of sponsors, as big-name champions are retiring.
FILE-A competitor drives his team run during the ceremonial start of the 2020 Iditarod Sled Dog Race on March 7, 2020 in Anchorage, Alaska. The second half-century for the world’s most famous sled dog race is getting off to a rough start.
The Iditarod is the most prestigious sled dog race in the world, taking competitors over two mountain ranges, the frozen Yukon River and treacherous Bering Sea ice in frigid temperatures before ending in the old Gold Rush town of Nome. "There’s a lot of kennels and a lot of mushers that rely on that to keep going," said Aaron Burmeister, a Nome native who is sitting out this year’s race to spend more time with family. Burmeister, who works construction, has had eight top 10 finishes in the last decade."Being able to race the Iditarod and the expense of putting together a race team became more than they could bear to maintain themselves," he said of mushers.
"You got to be totally prepared to run the Iditarod, and have enough money in the bank to do it," said Sass, who lives in Eureka, about a four-hour drive north of Fairbanks. PETA took out full-page newspaper ads in Anchorage and Fairbanks in February with a husky — the predominate sled dog breed — prominently featured with the headline, "We don’t want to go to the Iditarod. We just want the Iditarod to go."
Moving the start of the race north will likely become more common as global warming advances, said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Ice on Alaska's western coast could also get thinner and more dangerous, he said.
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