Who was the winner for the first race in the Iditarod?

Peter Kaiser and his team of dogs take off at the start of the Iditarod race.

Snow whipped past Peter Kaiser and his eight-dog team as they passed under the famous Burled Arch at the end of the grueling, 1,000-mile Iditarod sled dog race, cinching a first place win.

After racing for miles in inky darkness across the Alaska wildnerness, Kaiser was greeted in Nome, Alaska by bright lights, cameras, and cheering fans chanting "Way to go Pete!"

It was the 31-year-old's tenth time competing in the Iditarod, but his first time winning the championship — making him the first musher of Yup'ik descent to ever win the race.

Just after his finish at 3:39 a.m. on Wednesday morning, Kaiser raised both arms in a double-fist pump celebration.

Peter Kaiser celebrates his first-place victory at the finish line of the Iditarod race.

"Honestly, I've heard this from many different people that have won, but it hasn't sunk in," he told NPR's Melissa Block. "Like, you actually have to think about it pretty hard and you're like, 'oh man, I actually won this.'"

Kaiser managed to edge out the defending champion, Joar Leifseth Ulsom, by 12 minutes. His winning time was nine days, 12 hours, 39 minutes and six seconds.

"We just got some trail that the team really likes and we didn't see much of that this race," Kaiser told Alaska Public Media. "My team really likes hard, fast trails where they can go fast, and that was probably the best type of trail for that kind of race, so when they got on that they really wanted to roar."

His win is a point of pride for his hometown of Bethel, Alaska which is situated in the Yukon Delta. The delta is where the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers empty into the Bering Sea on the western end of the state — and is the traditional land of Yup'ik people.

"It's about time somebody wins from Kuskokwim," Bethel resident Nelson Alexie told KYUK's Anna Rose MacArthur.

Over the course of the race, Kaiser's supporters — many of whom were from the same area as him — cheered him on and followed his race through his website and Facebook page. One native, Evon Waska, spoke in the Yup'ik language about the significance of the win for Alaskan natives.

"We Yup'ik people, are very proud," he told KYUK.

Unlike other competitors, who hail from prominent mushing families, Kaiser doesn't come from a dynasty of champion mushers.

"We kind of have our own little mushing story but it's not quite as mainstream as some of the others," Kaiser said.

Though Kaiser is Alaskan on his mother's side, it was his father, Ron Kaiser, originally from Kansas, who introduced him to mushing. His father had a dog team and started mushing in the late 70s — but never competed at a high level.

At first, Kaiser mushed for fun, but after graduating high school and trying out college, he decided he wanted to make a career out of racing. In the winters, he trains and races, and in the summer he works seasonal jobs. He owns a total of 40 dogs at his kennel, which require attention, care and training all year round.

Of Kaiser's eight-dog team — Morrow, Lucy, Frieda, Sky, Zuma, Pronto, Charlie and Arbor — Morrow and Lucy were his two lead dogs that pushed the team across the finish. Kaiser said he thinks the dogs know they accomplished something special.

"They have an idea of when teams are in front of them on the trail or not," he said. "They're real spunky right now and probably ready to go for another run, but they're going to get some good time off."

In the past, his best finishes had been a fifth place spot in the 2018, 2016 and 2012 races. His prize for winning this year's race includes $50,000 and a new truck. He is also planning to take some time to enjoy himself.

His secret for success this year? He's not quite sure — he said there are a variety of factors that may have helped him triumph.

"I can't put my finger on one thing in particular, but I guess we have a whole year to kind of figure out what we did right."

Kaiser regularly pays attention to the small details that contribute to a win. He jots down extremely precise details about his dogs and various races in many notebooks that he regularly studies to enhance his performance.

One big factor is the snow itself. The record for the fastest winning time in the Iditarod is a time of eight days, three hours, 40 minutes and 13 seconds by Mitch Seavey in 2o17. By comparison, this year's race was a little slow — partially due to how the warmer weather over the past two years has impacted the snow.

"Anytime you get fresh snow and drifting snow and warmer temperatures, you're going to have a slower race," Kaiser explained. "So the pace of the race is really more dictated by trail conditions and weather than dog teams."

Peter Kaiser and his team of dogs crossed the finish line just past 3 a.m. on Wednesday morning.

It's too soon to tell whether Kaiser is kicking off an Iditarod dynasty for his six-year old son and 1-year-old daughter.

But, his son Ari took to the dogs from an early age — making puppy-like howling sounds — and likes to mush with the family's retired racing dogs. Since his son only weighs about 45 pounds, his sled team is a lot smaller than Kaiser's — it's comprised of one dog, instead of eight.

About a week before Kaiser left to race the Iditarod, his son went on a dog sledding exursion of his own — bringing his baby sister, Aylee, along for the ride.

Iditarod winner Brent Sass poses for photos with lead dogs Morello, left, and Slater in the finish chute of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Nome, Alaska, Tuesday March 15, 2022. (Anne Raup/Anchorage Daily News via AP)

By MARK THIESSEN

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Musher Brent Sass won the arduous Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race across Alaska on Tuesday as his team of 11 dogs dashed off the Bering Sea ice through a crowd of fans in downtown Nome.

Sass mushed down Front Street and across the finish line just before 6 a.m.

“It’s awesome, it’s a dream come true,” Sass said before he was presented the prize-winning check of $50,000, his beard and mustache partially encased in ice during the post-race interview.

“When I started mushing, my goal was to win the Yukon Quest and win the Iditarod. Checked them both off the list now,” he said.

Sass said he was “super, super, super proud” of his dog team. “It’s all on them. They did an excellent job the whole race. I asked a lot of them, and they preformed perfectly,” he said.

”Every one of these dogs I’ve raised since puppies, and we’ve been working towards this goal the whole time, and we’re here,” he said, his voice cracking. “It’s crazy.”

Fans lined the street welcoming the popular musher, who was escorted by police for the final few blocks to the famous burled arch that marked his victory.

It’s the first Iditarod win for Sass, a wilderness guide and kennel owner who was running in his seventh Iditarod. His previous best finish was third last year.

Sass took command of this year’s race early on and never was challenged, but the final stretch of the race might have been the toughest, with extreme winds blowing on the Bering Sea ice leading into Nome.

“I had to make it very interesting at the end,” Sass said.

At one point during the last few miles of the race, he took a tumble, and the sled went off the trail. He thought he was going to have to hunker down, stopping with his dogs to wait until the weather improved.

“I couldn’t see anything,” he said. “The dogs, the only reason we got out of there is because they trusted me to get them back to the trail. And once we got back to the trail, they just took off a hundred miles an hour again, and we were able to stay on the trail and get in here. It was a lot of work,” he said.

The 42-year-old native of Minnesota who moved north in 1998 to ski for the University of Alaska Fairbanks had about a 90 minute lead over the defending champion, Dallas Seavey, early Tuesday as he left the last checkpoint in Safety, which is 22 miles from Nome.

Seavey is tied with musher Rick Swenson for the most Iditarod wins ever at 5. Seavey earlier told The Associated Press that he was planning to take some time off after the race to spend with his daughter whether he won or lost it.

Sass said Seavey is “the best right now and being able to to sort of keep him at bay the whole entire race and and race against the best guy in the business, that just makes this victory even sweeter.”

Seavey toward the end of the race said he was resigned to runner-up status, telling KTUU-TV at the checkpoint in White Mountain that he couldn’t win unless something went wrong for Sass.

Seavey joked: “We’ve got a pretty solid lead over third.”

The third place musher, Jessie Holmes, was about 50 miles behind Seavey on Tuesday.

The nearly 1,000-mile race across Alaska began March 6 just north of Anchorage. The route took mushers along Alaska’s untamed and unforgiving wilderness, including two mountain ranges, the frozen Yukon River and Bering Sea ice along the state’s western coastline.

This is the 50th running of the race, which started in 1973. This year’s event began with 49 mushers, and five have dropped out along the trail.

Sass was the Iditarod’s rookie of the year in 2012 when he finished 13th. The next year he fell back to 22nd place, before skipping the 2014 race.

In 2015 he was disqualified when race officials found he had an iPod Touch with him on the trail, a violation of race rules banning two-way communication devices because the iPod Touch could connect to the Internet. He said he was clueless, and wanted his fans to know he had no intention of cheating.

Sass placed 16th the following year before taking a three-year break from the Iditarod. In 2020, he placed fourth and was third last year.

Sass, who lives in the tiny area of Eureka, about a four-hour drive northwest of Fairbanks, had more success in the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race.

He claimed titles in that 1,000-mile race between Fairbanks and Whitehorse, Yukon, in 2015, 2019 and 2020. This year, the race was shortened to smaller races on both sides of the border, with Sass winning both the 350-mile Alaska race and the 300-mile Canadian contest.