The 2019 Iditarod is the 47th iteration of the
Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race held in
Alaska. The race began on March 2, 2019, in
Anchorage, Alaska
Anchorage () is the largest city in the U.S. state of Alaska by population. With a population of 291,247 in 2020, it contains nearly 40% of the state's population. The Anchorage metropolitan area, which includes Anchorage and the neighboring Ma ...
, and ended on March 18, 2019, in
Nome, Alaska
Nome (; ik, Sitŋasuaq, ) is a city in the Nome Census Area in the Unorganized Borough of Alaska, United States. The city is located on the southern Seward Peninsula coast on Norton Sound of the Bering Sea. It had a population of 3,699 recorded ...
.
Fifty-two dog
mushers participated in the race, among them former Iditarod champions
Joar Leifseth Ulsom,
Mitch Seavey,
Martin Buser
Martin Buser (born March 29, 1958) is a champion of sled dog racing.
Born in Winterthur, Switzerland, Buser began mushing at age seventeen in Switzerland. In 1979, he moved to Alaska to train and raise sled dogs full-time. His training opera ...
,
Lance Mackey
Lance Mackey (June 2, 1970 – September 7, 2022) was an American dog musher and dog sled racer from Fairbanks, Alaska. Mackey was a four-time winner of both the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
Early life
Lance was born o ...
, and
Jeff King; other veteran mushers such as
Aliy Zirkle
Aliy Zirkle (born 1970 in New Hampshire) is an American champion of sled dog racing.
Aliy Zirkle moved to Bettles, Alaska at age twenty and began mushing due to the remote nature of the town. She adopted six sled dogs and began learning how to ...
and
Nicolas Petit; and ten rookies, including
Blair Braverman
Blair Braverman (born May 7, 1988) is an American adventurer, dogsled racer, musher, advice columnist and nonfiction writer. She raced and completed the 2019 Iditarod, the dogsled race from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska.
In 2016, the Outdoor I ...
. On March 13,
Peter Kaiser finished in first place, completing the course in nine days, 12 hours, 39 minutes and six seconds. Kaiser was the first Yup'ik native to win the Iditarod. Joar Leifseth Ulsom, the 2018 champion, came in a close second, finishing only twelve minutes after Kaiser. Jessie Royer placed third. Nicolas Petit, an early frontrunner in the race, dropped out on March 11 after his dogs refused to run farther. Along with Jessie Royer, Aliy Zirkle (fourth place) and Paige Drobny (seventh place) made history as the first three women to collectively finish in the top ten places of the Iditarod.
Apayauq Reitan
Apayauq Reitan is an Iñupiaq dog musher from Norway. She participated in the 2019 Iditarod as a rookie, finishing in 28th place in 12 days, 5 hours, 15 minutes, and 17 seconds. She also ran the Yukon Quest that year, also as a rookie. In 2022 ...
participated two years before she
came out as
transgender to her family, finishing in 28th place.
Issues
The Iditarod Trail Committee's lead drug tester resigned prior to the signup, under pressure from some of the competitors. Companies
Jack Daniels and
Wells Fargo dropped their sponsorship of the race, possibly due to pressure from
animal rights' activists.
The general warmer climate of Alaskan winters over previous years due to
global warming had mounted concerns that there would be a lack of snow for the race to utilize.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Iditarod, 2019
2019
File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...
2019 in sports in Alaska
Iditarod