Dallas Seavey breaks record with sixth Iditarod victory - ESPN

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Dallas Seavey's path to an Iditarod championship was like none he has faced before, including killing a moose and overcoming a time penalty that had him in 10th place at one point to win a record-breaking sixth championship in the world's most famous sled dog race.

Seavey drove his team a half-block off the Bering Sea ice onto the frozen streets of Nome to cross under the famed burled arch finish line, a triumphant moment in a race marred by the death of three sled dogs, including two on Sunday, and serious injury to another.

The deaths prompted one animal rights organization to renew its call for the end of the storied endurance race in which a team of dogs pulls a sled across 1,000 miles (1,609-kilometers) of Alaska wilderness.

«This one was supposed to be hard,» Seavey told the crowd. «It had to be special, it had to be more than just a normal Iditarod, and for me, it was.»

As he neared the finish line, he jumped off his sled and ran with his dogs, pumping his fists. After he reached the finish line, he hugged each dog on the team.

«There wasn't a core group of super, super athletes, but what these guys had with a lot of heart, and it was a team and they worked together the whole way down the trail,» he said. «When you look back at 1,000 miles of what these dogs just covered, the challenges they faced, you can't swallow that in one bite, but we can have one good step at a time. And if you can keep doing that, it leads to something.»

Seavey, 37, becomes the winningest musher in the 51-year history of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which takes the teams over two mountain ranges, across the Yukon River and along the frozen edges of the Bering Sea just south of the Arctic Circle. He won just over