The Iditarod meme
Iditarod director leaving
While most of the sporting world was Friday chattering about the FIFA World Cup, the July Fourth start of the Tour de France, or the latest NFL star facing serious criminal charges, the buzz in the small world of Alaska sled dog racing was all about the departure of Shirtless Rob Urbach, the executive director of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
The Iditarod Official Finishers Club (IOFC), a group of a little more than 400 people who have officially made the journey from Anchorage to Nome behind a team of dogs, had back in March voted unanimously to ask for the resignation of both Urbach and Mike Mills, an Anchorage attorney who sits at the head of the board of directors of the Iditarod Trail Committee, the organization that runs the race.
Mills and Urbach were informed of that vote earlier this month and told that the IOFC board was to meet again on Thursday to discuss the vote and what to do about it.
Then, lo and behold, on Friday, the Iditarod put out a statement announcing that “Chief Executive Officer
Rob Urbach has made the decision to step down following seven years of leadership. Urbach will
remain in his role throughout a planned transition period and will assist the Board of Directors in the
search for the organization’s next CEO, ensuring a thoughtful and seamless leadership transition.”
No mention was made of the IOFC, the race’s short-lived and disastrous foray into crypto currency with the Iditacoin, or the creation this year of a special, “expedition musher” class of Iditaord entrants which allowed 66-year-old Norwegian billionaire Kjelle Røkke to steal some of the race winner’s thunder by becoming the first dog driver ever to make it from Anchorage to Nome in less than eight days.
He arrived in Nome in time to get a good night’s sleep before the true winner of the race got there.
Starry-eyed Iditarod fans were quick to point out that Røkke was only able to travel so fast because he had support along the trail and was allowed to trade out tired dogs for fresh one, which he did. But in the big picture, the reality was writ in the late President Ronald Reagan’s gold rule: “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
And then, of course, there was rich-guy number two – former Canadian Steve Curtis, aka Steve Curtis Holfeld – who Urbach let buy his way into the race. Curtis, who has been invovled in a significant number of Canadian lawsuits alleging his businesses failed to pay their bills, now runs a hedge fund in the Cayman Islands and hangs out in the Bahamas, where the Bahama Press reported tha he was arrested earlier htis year after Customs agents his Freeport home “discovered a clear glass jar containing suspected marijuana, multiple international ID cards, and divers licenses.”
Curtis never made it to the Iditarod’s halfway point, but made such a stink as he struggled to get to McGrath that Iditarod checkpoint volunteers have been threatened not to talk about what all happened. But whatever happened there is really nothing compared to the Iditacoin, which was rolled out with big promises and promptly fizzled.
The reality was that Iditacoin was dead within nine months and rolled into something called Dogatopia, which also died. It, in turns, appears to have been swallowed up by something called DOGZ.
The Iditarod press release on Friday said “Urbach will continue leading and developing DOGZ, a canine-focused platform company in which an affiliate of the Iditarod holds a majority interest. DOGZ was created to build an integrated ecosystem of canine events, content, products, and services designed to generate long-term value for the Iditarod.”
The only ones to get any money out of the Iditacoin-Dogatopia adventure in Alaska appear to have been Sparrow Rogers and Josephine Mills, the daughter of board chair Mike Mills. They got paid to executre Urbach’s great crypto plan.
Dogatopia described Rogers as a “serial entrepreneur…recognized as a leader in healthcare innovation, endurance event management and start-up fundraising….She was retained by the Iditarod to oversee the development of a 50th anniversary NFT catalog and to help design a broader blockchain strategy for their community.”
Before moving south to San Diego to “help restore coral reefs to secure a vital food source and part of our ocean’s fundamental health,” she reported she was in Alaska for “several months…working as the Project Lead with team Iditarod – a favorite Alaskan charitable organization – to create their own crypto token, the IditaCoin (DGZ). The Iditarod is celebrating its 50th anniversary so this was a wonderful opportunity to bring old school and new school ops initiatives together.”
Joswephine “JoJo” Mills, the third member of the Dogatopia team, appeared to be employed as a “research analyst” for the project until she decided to “commence studies at Notre Dame Law School this” with a focus on “blockchain and cryptocurrency law.” She is now dealing with patent issues surrounding crypto, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence in the Seattle office of the Davis, Wright Tremaine law firm.
Urbach, for his part, appears to now be leaving his latest job the way he left the one before. When he departed a $362,000 per year job as CEO at USA Triathlon in 2017, the reasons were not explained. But Triathlete magazine subsequently reported he was asked to resign. The board of USA Triathlon apparently thought there was a conflict of interest in Urbach hiring his wife to decorate the USA Triathlon offices.
Two years after leaving Triathlon, Urbach was hired by Iditarod and brought north with him big promises of reinvigorating the race. In an interview with Anchorage’s KTVA News, he suggested he could “leverage” the Iditarod to the sports status of Michael Jordan because, as he said, “dogs are hot.”
The plan clealry didn’t work. The Iditarod has in recent years shrunk to a fraction of the size of its former self.
Urbach’s tenure has been such a failure he might end up being best remembered in the 49th state as the guy who showed up shirtless for a Zoom meeting in 2022. His explanation was that he needed to change clothes and forgot to turn off the camera on his computer.
It was not a good look.
