Born in Alabama, the former reality star Jessie Holmes wins record-iditarod

Anchorage, Alaska (AP) -Jessie Holmes, a former reality television star, won the longest Iditarod Sled dog race on Friday, which celebrated a cheering crowd with fist pumps and posed for photos with his two floral wreath-headed teams, Hercules and Polar.

Holmes was at the first finish line in the Goldrauschstadt Nome on the Bering Sea Coast. The race began on March 3 in Fairbanks after a lack of snow forced changes to the route and the starting point.

This made the normally 1,609 kilometer race an astonishing race of 1,128 miles (1,815 kilometers) in the wilderness of Alaska. Holmes ended in 10 days, 14 hours, 55 minutes and 41 seconds.

“It is difficult to put into words, but it's a magical feeling,” said Holmes shortly after crossing the finish line. “It's not about this moment now.

He will take home 57,200 US dollars for winning the race together with awards with gold nuggets worth 4,500 US dollars and 25 pound of fresh salmon for the first end in earlier stadiums.

Holmes, who fought for the eighth time, was previously five times in the top 10, including the third year in the last year and in 2022. In his first idiarod 2018, his seventh outdoor runner was honored.

Matt Hall, who was born in Eagle, a tiny community on the Yukon River in the east of Alaska and began at the age of 2, crossed the finish line three hours after Holmes to take second place. His parents had an expedition company, and he grew up with sled dogs and directed a week for customers.

Hall laughed with iron -known eyelashes when he described this year's longer distance as “too long”.

Paige Drobny finished third and became the first woman on the podium since Jessie Royer took third place in 2020. It was Drobny's 10th attempt in the race.

Drobny lives in Cantwell, Alaska, with her husband and other long-haul musher Cody Strathe, where they raise sled dogs on the Squid Acres Zwinger. The name comes from the thesis of her master about squid in the Bering Sea.

Holmes, who was born and grew up in Alabama, was at the age of 18 and worked as a carpenter in Montana for three years. He arrived in Alaska in 2004 and found Adventure Running Dogs on a remote location of the Yukon River.

“It was really astonishing 10 days and I have in every part of the depth, the highs, the in-between.

He gave his two main leaders, Hercules, half a sparkling dog and Polar a special greeting, who said: “He is the brain behind the operation.”

Holmes now lives in Nenana, where he works as a carpenter and lives a lifestyle for subsistence. From 2015 to 2023 he was an actor of “Life under Zero”, a National Geographic program that documented the struggles of the Alaskans in remote parts of the state.

In addition to the lack of snow north of the Alaska area, which prompted the starting point to Fairbank, the racing organizers also had to make changes to the ceremonial start to the anchorage.

Since Snow in Cover Street was in the Cover Street in the largest city in the state, the usual parade route there was shortened from 11 miles to less than 2 miles (from about 18 kilometers to less than 3.2 kilometers) and the number of dogs was reduced, and the number of dogs was reduced.

It was the fourth time in this century that the race was forced north from the Anchorage area due to a lack of snow.

Only 33 Musers began in Fairbanks, associated with 2023 for the smallest field of all time. The decline of the participants has expressed concerns about the liability of the breed, which had to fight with inflation, climate change and pressure from animal rights groups.

A dog died in this year's Iditarod: a pregnant woman in the team of Musher Daniel Klein, who scratches racial rules because of death.

Almost a third of the Musers announced early, including eight, the scratched and two who were withdrawn because they were not competitive.

This year's Iditarod run paid tribute to another famous Mushing event, the serum run of 1925, in which sled dog teams Nome saved a fatal diphtheria outbreak.