While reality TV star Jessie “Moose Killer” Holmes and his wolf pack were charging toward a first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race victory on Wednesday, race organizers were busy killing the feel-good story of the 2025 race.
Forced from the trail for allegedly going too slow were Justin Olnes from Fairbanks and his team of dog-pound sled dogs. His ouster came only a day after Alaska public media featured him as an illustration of all that is best about the 49th state mushing scene.
The shelter in the largest city in Central Alaska is a well-known dumping spot for unwanted sled dogs. Their numbers are such they have spawned sled-dog rescue groups in the city and encouraged other mushers to put together kennels similar to ReRun.
Kleckner and longtime partner Don Kiely were credited with rehoming more than 500, dumped sled dogs over two decades. Following in their footsteps, ReRun was set up “to promote the sport of dog mushing while providing a home for rescue dogs in need,” according to the kennel website.
Running his first Iditarod, Olnes was the third to last musher into the Shageluk checkpoint on Wednesday and the only one to make it out of there.
Behind him, the Iditarod pulled the plug on Sydnie Bahl of Wasilla and Quince Mountain from Wisconsin.
Tossed out
Bahl’s withdrawal drew a response from an outraged Iditarod veteran Vern Halter on his Facebook page. A former Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race champ and a notable Iditarod contender prior to his retirement in 2006, Halter is a Matanuska-Susitana valley neighbor of Bahl’s.
A nine-time, top-10 Iditarod finisher, Halter came third in 1999 behind four-time champs Doug Swingley from Montana and Martin Buser from Big Lake.
He went on to argue there was no sign that Bahl’s team was in any way faltering, only that it was traveling at a slower pace than the leaders on a rerouted trail similar to that of 2003. It that year took the last finisher 15 days, 5 hours and 51 minutes to reach Nome.
“Syd is on this pace easily,” Halter added. “Syd was one of these new mushers – half the field this year. She worked full-time as a physical therapist, but mush(ing) was in her soul. The Iditarod must not want new future mushers because up until now Syd was not a one-and-done Iditarod musher.”
Halter’s post drew hundreds of comments from Iditarod fans and quite a few comments from veteran mushers who ran past Iditarods.
“I am very curious as to how the Race Marshall is going to explain pulling Syd from the race when she was clearly staying competitive and close to the other back-of-the-pack racers,” Cindy Abbott wrote there. “And her speed was increasing as her dogs settled into their pace.”
Abbott, a two-time Iditarod finisher and one of only three Iditarod adventurers (no race winners are among them) ever to stand on the summit of Mount Everest, later posted that the race needed “to issue a public apology for making a terrible decision.”
Instead, race officials doubled down and talked Olnes into scratching at Eagle Island on the Yukon River. Scratches are theoretically voluntary, but many Iditarod mushers have in recent years been browbeat into scratching.
“Had” to scratch
On Facebook, ReRun Kennel explained the situation this way:
Olnes left Eagle Island but turned around and came back, apparently unhappy with the slow speed of a team that he believed needed rest. Left unanswered is what Iditarod would have done if he’d forged ahead on a death march to the next checkpoint in Kaltag.
Just ahead of him, Jenny Roddewigg from Fairbanks – who reached Eagle Island just a couple hours before Olnes – made the decision to leave that checkpoint after only 36 minutes of rest and push on.
She reached Kaltag behind a team that had slowed to a walk, having averaged a speed of less than 3.5 mph on the trudge north up the Yukon.
She and her team, along with two other rookie mushers and their teams, were still resting in Kaltag this afternoon. Rookie mushers have in recent years realized that Iditarod is more reluctant to kick a group than a trailing individual and have been known to team up to make Nome.
Whether that will save their Iditarod journey in a year when race officials are racing to get the race over with quickly remains to be seen.
Editor’s note: This is an edited version of the original story which incorrectly reported the number of Iditarod finishers to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
Jeeeeez……I agree with Vern. You must not want to encourage any new mushers. You have to be elite as a rookie or else you’re forced to withdraw/scratch/whatever or they pull you from the race.
Listen to your vets, you idiots. If the vets say the team looks good, the fact that you ran out of volunteers is your problem, not the racers’. Yes, pull someone if their dogs are in trouble. But to pull a musher with healthy happy dogs? What a waste. That musher paid the same entry fee as the other mushers but because you can’t get enough volunteers, you have to arbitrarily pull them from the race?
After a number of “poster” mushers made horrible choices in the not so distant past, tarnishing the image of the race for good, why not celebrate the mushers who treat their dogs (or handlers…or partners…or themselves) with love and respect and turn the race’s image around to one of honor and courage? How about celebrating the up and coming mushers? The “newbies” who are going to fuel your sport? Even if they aren’t in the top 10. Who cares? Their stories are just as valid as the perennial winners and usually a LOT more interesting.
The Iditarod needs to wake up or else their race won’t have any mushers left but a few past winners. And then there will be no more race. A lot of the non-mushing public is going to say “good riddance” and that’s a shame. There should be a way to run a long distance race with healthy dogs and mushers who have some integrity. But the organization itself has to have honor and courage, too, and that’s lacking. The Iditarod hasn’t figured it out yet; maybe they never will. They should be somebody’s master’s thesis on “how to ruin an organzation through blunders.”
If the Iditarod doesn’t have the resources to run the race it should not run at all. The teams have spent good money and lots of time training for the Iditarod and need the certainty that they can be allowed to run their race within a FIXED PARAMETER of timings and with well understandable rules. This excuse of not wanting the back of the pack to keep volunteers waiting is terrible. Terrible for the teams, support, fans, and the race itself. Many if not all of these athletes are usually competing with each other, a mini race within the race, and also competing against themselves. Do NOT interfere with this. You will kill this race.
I have much experience with the Yukon Quest over many years, in the boardroom(7 years)and out on the race trail as a photographer for more than seventeen years. I have seen all kinds of fantastic amazing performances of both mushers, dogs, handlers, and officials over the many years, and have witnessed many ‘races within The Race’ take place every year. Also witnessed with my own frozen eyes the strength and determination of many individuals, to overcome the many often grueling challenges of the Yukon Quest Trail. Many of the most dramatic ‘Hollywood’ moments happen in the back third of the pack, where these ‘slow pokes’ spend way way more time on the trail, often facing down rookie mistakes, weary and sometimes disgruntled volunteers, and far far from the (dwindling) crowds at the finish line. Several times I was at the finish line shooting a bone tired red lantern musher victorious in their ability to MAKE IT all the way. Hardly anyone left to cheer but they did not care. THEY MADE IT!!!
The event organizers simply cannot take this away from everyone. They cannot. To do so is cruel, unfair, and fraudulent in the extreme.