It’s Brent Sass’ Iditarod to lose as Dallas Seavey chases him up the coast

UPDATE, 11:30 a.m. Monday:

Eureka musher Brent Sass continued to lead the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Monday along the Norton Sound coast, arriving in the checkpoint of White Mountain at 11:05 a.m. with 12 dogs in harness — and a 20-mile lead over defending champion Dallas Seavey.

At White Mountain, mushers are required to take an eight-hour rest before making the final 77-mile run to Nome. When asked by Iditarod Insider on Sunday night about whether he’s allowed himself to start thinking about the finish line, Sass said, “No way, not quite yet.”

“We’re not there yet,” Sass said when he stopped in Koyuk. “It’s been a good run, but he’s still right back there.” Sass said he hadn’t seen another musher since Cripple, 379 miles back from Koyuk.

The last checkpoint the race leaders visited Monday was Elim. Sass spent five minutes there upon arriving at 5:12 a.m. Seavey arrived over two hours later, at 7:32 a.m., and left after seven minutes, according to the Iditarod leaderboard.

Original story:

Eureka musher Brent Sass is holding a modest but persistent lead in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race as he and Talkeetna’s Dallas Seavey move north along the sea ice on the coast of Norton Sound.

As of Sunday evening, Sass was nearly 20 miles farther up the trail than Seavey as the two alternated between runs and rests moving from Shaktoolik toward Koyuk, and beyond. It is one of the least predictable areas of the thousand-mile route, with mushers often met by strong winds that slow them down and obscure the trail.

Sure enough, Sass and Seavey had headwinds blowing from the north for much of Sunday.

By all indications, Seavey is still gunning to win this year and does not plan on ceding an inch to Sass as he chases him to the finish line Nome.

“You see people do big pushes and it puts them ahead, but ahead at the wrong time,” Seavey said in Unalakleet after he bedded his team in straw. “There’s only one place that you really need to be in front.”

Seavey is a master at racing up the fickle Norton Sound coast and has bested leading competitors in recent years to arrive first to Nome (including his father, Mitch). Seavey’s brother, Danny, an Iditarod veteran and close observer of the race, expects his brother aims to jump into lead somewhere along Golovin Bay on the way from Elim to White Mountain. He wrote on Facebook, however, that so far Sass has not slowed down enough for that to happen.

Iditarod Insider analyst Bruce Lee observed on Saturday that Seavey might have a few small advantages: Running behind the leader gives him a bit more information along the trail, like leftover food scraps indicating Sass’ feeding breaks or straw piles indicative of rests.

According to Alaska Public Media, Seavey told reporters during his break in Unalakleet that he’d veered slightly off the trail crossing the portage from Kaltag to look for signs that Sass had rested at Old Woman Cabin -- which he had. Lee, an Iditarod veteran himself, believes Seavey’s dogs look a little stronger than Sass’ team coming into checkpoints, though only slightly.

All of which is to say, according to most close trail watchers, barring any unexpected variables or mistakes, the race is Sass’ to lose at this point.

No one in the chase pack looks likely to surge ahead from behind and spring to victory, though it will be a fierce competition for third place on down.

Nome/Nenana musher Aaron Burmeister, arriving in Unalakleet on Sunday morning, acknowledged that he’s not likely to win unless something dramatic occurs up front.

“There’s nothing that’s gonna slow them down. Those guys will be duking it out up there, and I’ll be behind them to pick up the pieces if something goes wrong, but I’m just enjoying this ride with the dogs,” he said Sunday.

[Aaron Burmeister, veteran musher at the top of his game, plans to step back from Iditarod racing after this year]

The place-hopping and leapfrogging up and across the coast is about more than vanity: Each position a musher can gain in the top 20 might mean thousands of dollars more in prize money. This year’s top 20 is filled with veteran racers and past champions, all of whom have spent the last 700 or so miles readying for this final stage of the trail.

One of the mushers on the cusp of a top-20 finish is 22-year-old Hanna Lyrek of Norway, currently the leading rookie in this year’s race. Alaska Public Media wrote a profile of Lyrek, who lived the first five years of her life in Alaska before her family moved abroad.

She has an impressive resume for such a young musher. That includes winning Europe’s premier distance sled dog race at 19 and her spot on the elite QRILL team (alongside Seavey and fellow Norwegians Joar Leifseth Ulsom and Thomas Waerner — all three of whom are previous Iditarod champions).

At the current tempo, a winner is likely to reach Nome sometime late Monday night or early Tuesday morning.

Daily News multimedia journalist Marc Lester contributed reporting from Unalakleet.