ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Ryan Redington on Tuesday won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, bringing his six dogs off the Bering Sea ice to the finish line on Nome’s essential street.
Redington, 40, is the grandson of Joe Redington Sr., who helped co-found the arduous race across Alaska that was first held in 1973 and is referred to as the “Father of the Iditarod.”
“My grandpa, dad and Uncle Joee are all within the Mushing Hall of Fame. I got big footsteps to follow,” Ryan Redington wrote in his race biography.
He previously won the Junior Iditarod in 1999 and 2000. His father, Raymie, is a 10-time Iditarod finisher.
Redington, who’s Inupiat, becomes the sixth Alaska Native musher to win the world’s most famous sled dog race.
After crossing the finish in Nome around 12:15 p.m., he said it has been a goal of his since he was “a really small child to win the Iditarod, and I can’t consider it. It finally happened.
“It took loads work, took a whole lot of patience. And we failed quite just a few times, ? But we kept our head up high and stuck with the dream,” he said.
Redington won the Iditarod in his sixteenth try.
He scratched from seven of those races, but his performance this decade has been the perfect of his profession.
He finished ninth last 12 months, seventh in 2021 and eighth in 2020 — his only other top 10 finishes before this 12 months’s race.
The nearly 1,000-mile race began March 5 in Willow for 33 mushers, who traveled over two mountain ranges, the frozen Yukon River and on the Bering Sea ice.
Since then, three mushers have scratched.
A fan-friendly ceremonial start was held in Anchorage the day before.
It was the smallest field ever to begin a race, one in need of the primary race run.
Amongst those that scratched was defending champion Brent Sass, who was leading when he withdrew Saturday over concerns for his health due to periodontal issues.
He was doing OK and resting locally of Unalakleet, he posted on Instagram Sunday.
The Iditarod was caring for his dogs, he said.
Sass said he had been sick your entire race with a foul cold.
Then on Friday “some cracked teeth began giving me issues and over a 12-hour period changed into nearly unbearable pain,” he said. “My body mainly shutdown and for 2 runs I just held on. Ultimately I couldn’t take care of the dogs.“
He said the colder temperatures, dipping to minus 30 F, were making his dog team stronger, nevertheless it made him weaker.
For the primary a part of the race, mushers handled high temperatures, causing some to change their strategies.
Redington will earn about $50,000 for winning.
The precise amount won’t be calculated until the entire variety of finishers are known to separate the prize purse.
The 2 mushers who were chasing him to Nome are also Alaska Natives, Pete Kaiser, who’s Yup’ik and won the 2019 Iditarod, and Richie Diehl, who’s Dena’ina Athabascan. Redington won the race in 8 days, 21 hours, 12 minutes and 58 seconds. Kaiser finished second, greater than an hour behind Redington.
Diehl was third, ending about an hour behind Kaiser.
Redington splits his time between Alaska and Wisconsin. He trains his dogs in Brule, Wisconsin, in the autumn and winter.
He races in Alaska and Minnesota starting in December.
Within the summers, he has a sled dog tour for tourists within the ski community of Girdwood, about 30 miles south of Anchorage.
In January 2022, Redington was training in northern Wisconsin when a snowmobile driver veered into his dog team, injuring two dogs, before speeding off.
One in all the dogs, Wildfire, suffered a broken rear tibia, fibula and femur but recovered after multiple surgeries and began this 12 months’s race.
Nevertheless, Redington dropped him on the checkpoint in Skwentna a day after the official start.
“His heart was there, but he was just a little bit sore,” Redington told the Iditarod Insider webpage.
