Petit grabs the Iditarod lead from Leifseth Ulsom at Eagle Island

UPDATE, 8:45 a.m. Saturday -- Defending champion Joar Leifseth Ulsom of Norway was the first musher to reach Eagle Island at 2:03 a.m. Saturday, but his lead quickly vanished when Nic Petit of Girdwood showed up 42 minutes later.

Petit spent eight minutes in the checkpoint before leaving at 2:53 a.m. with 11 dogs. He was 21 minutes faster than Leifseth Ulsom on the 62-mile run from Grayling, where Leifseth Ulsom left with a 63-minute lead over Petit.

Eagle Island is 592 miles into the 1,000-mile race.

Pete Kaiser of Bethel was the second musher to reach the checkpoint, arriving at 2:28 a.m. -- but he isn’t really in the top three. He still needs to take his mandatory eight-hour Yukon River layover, and a half-dozen mushers behind him on the trail to Eagle Island have already done theirs, as have Leifseth Ulsom and Petit.

Kaiser had the fastest run from Grayling to Eagle Island. He did it in 6 hours, 24 minutes, Petit in 6:55 and Leifseth Ulsom in 7:16.

At 8:45 a.m., the Iditarod’s GPS tracker showed Kaiser, Leifseth Ulsom and Jessie Royer all out of Eagle Island and pursuing Petit down the Yukon River.

Next up for the frontrunners is a 65-mile run to Kaltag.

ORIGINAL STORY

The race is on between Joar Leifseth Ulsom and Nicolas Petit, the men who finished 1-2 in last year’s Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race and were 1-2 out of Grayling on Friday.

Leifseth Ulsom, the defending champ from Norway, left the checkpoint 63 minutes ahead of Girdwood’s Petit, last year’s runner up.

Both men are running 11 dogs, and both have taken their mandatory eight-hour layovers on Yukon River. As of Friday evening, they are the clear frontrunners in the 1,000-mile race to Nome, but there’s still a lot of trail left.

Leifseth Ulsom left Grayling, 530 miles into the race, at 6:47 p.m. after a five-hour stay. He did his eight-hour layover earlier in the day at Shageluk.

Petit waited until Grayling to take his. He left the checkpoint at 7:50 p.m.

They’re headed to Eagle Island, a checkpoint 62 miles up the Yukon whose status was tenuous earlier in the day.

[Standings and full coverage of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race]

Earlier in the day, the race judge in Shageluk told mushers that he didn’t know if the supplies had made it to Eagle Island because of poor flying conditions, and they should prepare accordingly. That left some mushers calculating how much extra food and other essentials they should haul in their sleds.

Race officials confirmed Friday night that supplies — including food bags and straw — were being ferried to Eagle Island by snowmachine instead of by plane.

Last year, Eagle Island was eliminated as a checkpoint because of poor flying conditions.

[It was 37 degrees and raining in Shageluk Friday. Iditarod mushers weren’t very happy.]

As of 9 p.m. Friday, only Leifseth Ulsom and Petit were on the trail to Eagle Island. Six more were in Grayling, including Aliy Zirkle of Two Rivers, who arrived in sixth place and was back in the chase after a long, grueling run from Ophir to Iditarod dashed her hopes of grabbing command of the race.

Zirkle, Jessie Royer, Pete Kaiser and Mitch Seavey still need to take their mandatory 8s on the Yukon, and it appeared they were doing so in Grayling.

Arriving at the checkpoint not long after Leifseth Ulsom left were two mushers who have completed their 8s – Richie Diehl of Aniak, who got there at 7:15 p.m., and Ryan Redington of Skagway at 8:10 p.m.