Brent Sass: Nordic skier-turned-musher wins 50th running of Alaska's Iditarod race

Story by Reuters

Updated 1725 GMT (0125 HKT) March 15, 2022

Veteran musher Brent Sass of Eureka, Alaska holds his lead dogs Slater and Morello after winning his first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race championship in Nome, Alaska, U.S. March 15, 2022.

Anchorage, Alaska (Reuters)Brent Sass, a 42-year-old former college Nordic skier, glided into Nome early on Tuesday morning to win Alaska'sIditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in the 50th year that the grueling, 1,000-mile (1,610-km) test of endurance has been run.

A cheering crowd greeted Sass and his dog team when they reached the finish line on Nome's Front Street at 5:38 a.m. His elapsed time of eight days, 14 hours and 38:43 minutes was one of the fastest times in the Iditarod's 50-year history.It was the first Iditarod victory for Sass, who lives in Eureka, a tiny settlement outside of Fairbanks.Until now, his third-place finish in last year's Covid-19-altered race was his best Iditarod result. Even so, as three-time winner of the Yukon Quest International, a separate 1,000-mile sled dog race, Sass was considered a top contender from the start of this year's Iditarod.Brent Sass during the ceremonial start of the 50th Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Anchorage, Alaska, U.S. March 5, 2022. His win seemed assured for days. He held a steady lead from the race's halfway point at Cripple, an abandoned mining settlement that he reached last Wednesday.Read MoreIn the final stretch, he was consistently more than two hours ahead of his nearest rival, five-time champion Dallas Seavey. Seavey managed to make up some time in the last miles to Nome and finished a little more than an hour after Sass.For his victory in the world's most famous sled-dog race, Sass will take a share of the Iditarod's