Ultimate Iditarod's Teams Safely in Nome
March 18, 2003

By Tyrell Seavey

We made it to Nome!!!  All four of Ultimate Iditarod’s mushers successfully completed their races.  Mitch Seavey, Cindy Gallea, Tyrell Seavey and Jim Gallea placed 12^th, 33rd, 36^th, and 40^th respectively.  This year’s race was a trying one.  The new race route provided multiple new challenges, and 20 teams were forced to scratch before reaching Nome. 

Because of rough training conditions Mitch decided to run this race conservatively, and seemed happy with the end result.  Cindy ran a great race, and achieved her personal best finish.  Jim and I were both very pleased with the performance of our young dogs—we finished nearly 24 hours ahead of our previous puppy teams. 

One of the difficult parts of the race for me was keeping the young dogs entertained on the long boring stretches on the Yukon River.  It seemed that I was forced to take considerable extra rest to keep the dogs focused during the runs, so they were not really being run to the best of their ability.  Once we got off the river at Kaltag 2 and started running through the forest again, they really picked up.  And suddenly I was riding a well-rested 12-dog rocket.  I was able to run at near record speeds up the coast and into Nome.  Of course, when you are running in 36^th place, it doesn’t count for much, but it was fun.   

I was fortunate enough to have one of those “once-in-a-life-time” lead dogs.  When the going got tough I had trouble keeping the young dogs up front so I ended up falling back on, Duncan, a five year old lead dog that started his racing career with Jim’s puppy team in ’99.  Duncan came through time and time again on the race, and soon became a permanent fixture in the front of my team.  Look for a few summer updates from those of us here at Ultimate Iditarod as we continue to catch up on our sleep and get back into the “real world.”

Ultimate Iditarod would like to express a special thanks to our trail reporters Bill Gallea and Daniel Vetsch as well as Jim Benning and Debbie Reinwand at Bradley Reed Communications for all of their behind-the-scenes work in making this year’s Iditarod coverage a reality.  We appreciate the support of all our dedicated fans and visitors throughout the training season and during the race.

See you on the trail,

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