Truckload Authority - Winter 2014/15

Sponsored by J. J. Keller & Associates, Inc.
jjkeller.com | 877.564.2333
They crested over Cape Nome and started dropping
down.
“I think maybe at this point we had seven miles to
go to the finish line.”
There was also this light behind him that Seavey
decided was another musher, perhaps his father, who’d
been behind him in fourth place at White Mountain. After
all, Mitch Seavey had won the 2013 race.
“I thought certainly it can’t be my dad. He was more
than two hours behind me leaving White Mountain and
he’s more beat up than I am and I was more concerned
with him just making it through the storm. Certainly he
hadn’t made up more than two hours on me.
“But the last thing I was going to let happen was
my dad passing me the last couple miles. I know I’ll be
hearing about this for the next year,” Seavey said with a
competitive chuckle.
Dallas decided to push his speed. So he gave the
command, and off they went, except now Reef, the little
dog who’d been so anxious to go at Safety, was running
out of gas, Dallas explained. “So I whistled up the team
and again they surprised me majorly for the second time
that night. Instead of me whistling at them and looking at
me like, ‘Are you kidding me? You want us to go faster?,’
they pretty much all broke into a lope and took off like
they hadn’t done anything yet. Everybody with the exception
of little Reef. He was willing to go; he just physically
didn’t have the speed that the older dogs were doing. So I
stopped right away picked him up and set him in my sled,
which he was not happy about. It was the best thing for
him, so I set him in there. Now with only six dogs on the
ground, we were flying. This team is absolutely cruising,
they had confidence. Their boss said to go faster, they
were happy to go faster. If I said they could go through a
storm, they believed they could go through a storm. That
was really fun for me to see this team kick it into fifth gear
on this final stretch and have no problems with that despite
everything they had been through.”
He was intent on finishing third ahead of his father,
not fourth.
He looked behind him again. “That light behind me
I saw bobbing up and down faster and faster as they
were trying to catch us. And so the last four to five miles
I think we stayed pretty much even, where the light at
times seemed a little closer, and maybe at other times
even a little farther back. But never at most being more
than a half a mile behind us, even less than that.”
About two miles from the finish line, Seavey found it
odd that the locals and the media still lined the streets
hours after the winner had arrived.
He figured King had made it a couple or three hours
earlier with Zirkle close behind, so he rationalized maybe
the media was following him, too, perhaps because
he was a previous race winner or maybe with the race
long over, they had time to fill.
Or maybe, they wanted to watch the final chapter of
the father-son finish.
“I knew when I actually got onto Front Street with
about a half a mile to go that I would actually stay in
front of the team behind me and my dad wasn’t going
to be able to catch me; we were going to hang onto our
third-place finish.”
Wow, that was close, he thought.
He was completely sweat drenched because he
hadn’t taken time to take off layers or anything because
he was so exhausted when he hit the finish line eight
days, 13 hours, 19 minutes and four seconds after leaving
the starting line in Anchorage, bruised and battered
from the Alaskan tundra, but content because he felt
he’d done his best.
The television cameras swarmed and the flashes
from the scores of photographers on hand lit up the bitterly
cold Alaskan night. After collapsing onto his sled
his wife Jen, also a musher and former Iditarod competitor,
was quick to give him a hug. After their shared
embrace his thoughts quickly turned to his team. As he
made his way to his dogs, eager to thank them one by
one for their fight and resolve during their 1,000-mile
journey together, he was not prepared for the question
he was about to receive from a local reporter.
“I pretty much just crumpled on my sled trying to
catch my breath for a minute; my whole body is hurting
at this point. And after a few moments I walked up to give
my dogs a pat on the head (I was awfully proud of them)
when one of them media who’d followed me on the whole
race asked me, ‘Did you think you could do it?’”
Seavey thought the reporter was referring to a
running joke of sorts they’d had the whole way, where
Seavey dropped six hours behind the leaders to running
eight hours behind, then 10 hours behind, despite
the reporter knowing that Seavey’s style is a comefrom-behind
win.
All along the way, the reporter had taunted Seavey
with “Do you still think you can win this race? Do you
still think you can win this race?”
“The reporter was taunting as we got farther and farther
away from the lead,” Seavey said. “So when he asked, ‘Did
you think you could do it,’ that’s the first time I wondered,
‘Wait a second, did I totally miss something here?’”
Now it became Seavey’s time to turn the tables.
“I asked him, ‘Did I think I could do what?’ That’s
when he said, ‘You just won the Iditarod.’
“And then the pieces started falling into place. No
wonder there had been more fans than I’d ever seen at
the finish line because this did turn into a photo finish
for first place where things had gone very differently
than expected with the storm. Aliy had to stop in the
storm and give her dogs a rest to have enough energy
in them to complete the last 20 miles; my dad was
still safely not two hours but now closer to three hours
behind me; and everything started to fall into place as
they explained what happened. Right at that time two
minutes, 22 seconds after I crossed the finish line, Aliy
pulled in.”
Shortly thereafter, Seavey learned that the wind
had blown four-time Iditarod champion King off the
course six miles from the Safety checkpoint and he had
to scratch from the race.
“It was a pretty amazing way for a race to finish,”
Seavey says now in retrospect. “But it really brought
light to how we had run the whole race and made the
right decisions for our team, not trying to figure out how
to outsmart or outmaneuver the other teams; how to do
what was right for our team and to just trust that if we
did that the whole way, good things would happen.”
Dallas Seavey had completed an unprecedented
night of dog sled racing and emerged victorious in the
most thrilling and improbable of ways. He had demonstrated
championship qualities far beyond his years to
claim his second Iditarod title in three years with his
father claiming the other.
He and his team are currently into their heavy training
period in preparation for the 2015 race beginning
Saturday, March 7.
Though young Seavey would not make any predictions
about the upcoming race he did reveal his team
is “running at a higher level than I’ve ever had a team
run at this point. We’re about a month ahead training
wise which means I get to spend half this winter really
pushing their limits. The athletes on this team are phenomenal.”
The next chapter of the Dallas Seavey legacy
will be written soon. We will be anxiously watching as
will millions more around the world. A’ight!