Iditarod competition underway with official start

The serious competition in the world's most famous sled-dog race began on Sunday afternoon as 62 mushers and their dog teams sped around an ice-covered lake and into the Alaska wilderness.

Sunday's official restart of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race was held in Willow, a small community about an hour's drive north of Anchorage. The race had a ceremonial start on Saturday with an untimed trek through Anchorage. DeeDee Jonrowe, a perennial contender who lives nearby, was first musher out of the starting chute on Sunday. The remaining 61 dog teams departed at two-minute intervals, passing cheering spectators gathered along the lake and huddled in campsites. The final musher to depart was Justin Savadis, a 36-year-old rookie who also makes his home in Willow. From Willow, the mushers entered the historic Iditarod Trail, the travel and mail route established during Alaska's Gold Rush period. The next race checkpoint, 52 miles away though a section of birch forest and frozen swamps, is Yentna Station, site of a roadhouse and normally home to just eight people, according to Iditarod officials. The 1,100-mile race will ultimately take mushers and their dogs to Nome, a Bering Sea town established a century ago during the Gold Rush. Sunday's kickoff of timed competition is in accordance with long-standing Iditarod practices. The race splits the Anchorage and Willow starts because of safety concerns in the urban center of the state's largest city. The race commemorates a 1925 rescue mission that sent diphtheria medicine to a disease-stricken Nome by sled-dog relay. Travel by sled dog was the only dependable method of reaching isolated Nome during that period in history. The winner is expected to reach Nome in about nine days, and will receive a prize of USD 50,400, plus a new truck.