As Iditarod mushers head toward the Norton Sound coast, expect a race to the finish

Eureka musher Brent Sass remains in the lead of this year’s Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race as the front of the pack moves toward the Norton Sound coast, constituting the race’s final and least predictable third.

Sass’ position is far from secure. He is facing an intense challenge from behind by five-time champion Dallas Seavey of Talkeetna, who is working to close the gap between the two teams. And the current third-place musher, Brushkana’s Jessie Holmes, is another wildcard. He’s posting remarkably fast run times and known to speed past competitors in the race’s final leg.

“It’s windy,” Sass said with a smile, talking with Iditarod Insider as he prepared to leave Kaltag after taking his mandatory eight-hour rest. Race rules require that layover to happen at one of the Yukon River checkpoints, and Kaltag is mushers’ last option before an 85-mile portage from the river over to the coast, which is notorious for its fickle weather.

“It’s starting to feel cold though, that’s kinda nice, I don’t mind that at all,” Sass added. “It’s gonna be nicer now that it’s a little bit chilly than the warm weather we’ve been having.”

Sass has been here before: In 2016 he led the pack and arrived first into Unalakleet. But that is where both Mitch and Dallas Seavey leapfrogged him, and Sass never regained the lead.

In the analysis of Iditarod veteran Danny Seavey — son of Mitch, brother of Dallas, an astute but not exactly impartial race watcher — Sass is running the 2020 race strategy that got him a fourth-place finish while Dallas is running the 2016 schedule that got him to Nome first. As Danny Seavey noted, Sass has maintained a consistent lead over Dallas for much of the race up to this point, but the length of that lead is eroding as his brother’s team quickens on runs between checkpoints.

“Dallas is finally gaining on Brent Sass. For the first time this race, we’re seeing a speed difference between the front two teams,” Danny Seavey wrote on Facebook.

Sass told Iditarod Insider that anything might happen along the coast, and the variables he thinks could prove decisive for his team are weather conditions and his own mental fortitude.

“It’s mainly me keeping my head screwed on straight and making some good decisions,” Sass said.

“Still got 20 miles on Dallas, and we’ll see what happens with that over the next couple hundred miles,” Sass said Thursday during a rest downriver from Galena on Friday. “But it’s better than being 20 behind.”

[Ahead of the Iditarod front-runners, trailbreakers cut a path to Nome]

On Saturday evening, Sass had managed to hold on to his 20-mile lead. He and Seavey were both resting their teams along the trail and were on track to arrive in Unalakleet overnight.

But Seavey’s run time from Nulato to Kaltag was 40 minutes shorter than Sass’.

“We’re running our schedule,” Seavey told Insider on Friday. “It’s fully intentional, that’s for sure.”

After some difficulties with a bug that ran through his team earlier in the race, Seavey sounded thrilled with his dogs’ performance coming off of his 24-hour rest. They are eating voraciously, he told a race checker in Galena as he loaded up on food.

“If we go into the coast with that, then I think we have a real fighting chance,” he told Insider.

Seavey is an extremely disciplined musher and sounded confident he could win this year’s race despite Sass’ persistent lead.

“Not that it really matters yet. We got a few more runs before it really starts to matter. Right now, I think I’ve got a great plan for the last part of this race. It worked for me before. I like this part of the race,” Seavey said while resting outside Galena.

Holmes’ team is running faster than either Sass’ or Seavey’s between some checkpoints, which could gradually shave down his competitors’ leads, or push his dogs beyond their limits and blow up his whole race.

Holmes’ time into Galena was almost a half-hour faster than Sass’.

Chatting with someone at the checkpoint, Holmes said he should slow his team down a bit to conserve their power, but given their performance he would try to keep them faster than the two mushers ahead of him.

“If Brent’s going 7 (miles per hour), all I gotta do is go 8 1/2, and I catch him by Shaktoolik, maybe,” Holmes said in an Insider video.

[Iditarod Q&A: What do mushers eat? How cold or hot does it get? And why are there fewer racers?]

Richie Diehl is another musher who is enjoying the Yukon trail conditions. He’s built a slight edge over Nome/Nenana’s Aaron Burmeister and Knik’s Ryan Redington as they’ve swapped the fourth-place position over the last few days.

“We definitely like where we are now,” Diehl said to Insider in Galena, noting that the conditions are similar to the Kuskokwim River where he trains from his home in Aniak. “Got onto the river and it was finally nice to see the dogs get into a rhythm, just a nice smooth trot. They’re eating well, for the most part.”

After Anchorage musher and Yukon Quest champion Hugh Neff’s scratch in Ruby on Friday, Alaska Public Media spoke with him and reported that Neff was not the one who initiated his scratch from the event.

“I was told I had a choice of scratching or being disqualified,” Neff told Alaska Public Media. “For the sake of the mushing community, I told them I was a scratch.”

Up to that point, Neff had been in the front pack for much of the race while running dogs that belong to Chugiak musher and Iditarod veteran Jim Lanier.

After a dog on his team died during the 2018 Yukon Quest, Neff was barred from competing in either the Iditarod or the Yukon Quest the following year. The Iditarod cited “concerns over his lack of dog care” in its decision.

Alaska Public Media reported that Neff heard from a veterinarian in Ruby that “his dogs weren’t in good enough condition to run,” though Neff said they had begun to get better.