Musher Brent Sass wins his first Iditarod race across Alaska

The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race was won by a team of 11 dogs on Tuesday as they ran through a crowd of fans in downtown Nome.

The musher crossed the finish line on Front Street just before 6 a.m.

Before he was presented the prize-winning check of $50,000, his beard and mustache partially encased in ice, he said it was a dream come true.

When I started mushing, my goal was to win the Iditarod. He said he checked them off the list.

He said he was proud of his dog team. They did a great job. He said that he asked a lot of them and they preformed perfectly.

He said that every one of the dogs he's raised since puppies has been working towards this goal.

Fans lined the street welcoming the popular musher to the finish line. Some people gave him high-fives as a police cruiser escorted him to the arch that marked his victory.

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

The final stretch of the race might have been the toughest with winds blowing on the ice leading into Nome.

I had to make it very interesting at the end.

The sled went off the trail after he took a tumble in the last few miles of the race. He thought he would have to hunker down and wait for the weather to improve.

The dogs were the only reason we got out of there. After we got back to the trail, they took off a hundred miles an hour again and we were able to stay on the trail. He said it was a lot of work.

The Minnesota native had a 2 hour lead over the defending champion. All mushers have to take an eight-hour break in White Mountain before they can make the final push for the finish in Nome. The last checkpoint before the finish line was Safety.

Seavey is tied with Rick Swenson for the most Iditarod wins. Seavey told The Associated Press that he was going to take some time off after the race to spend time with his daughter.

Seavey is the best right now and being able to keep him at bay the whole race makes this victory even sweeter.

Seavey told KTUU-TV at the checkpoint in White Mountain that he couldn't win unless something went wrong for Sass.

Seavey joked that they had a solid lead over third.

Seavey was about 50 miles behind the third-place musher.

The race began north of Anchorage on March 6. The route took mushers along the untamed and unforgiving wilderness of Alaska, including two mountain ranges.

The race started in 1973. The event started with 49 mushers and five of them dropped out.

He finished 13th in the Iditarod in 2012 and was the rookies of the year. He fell back to 22nd place in the next year.

He was disqualified from the race in 2015 because 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 wanted his fans to know he had no intention of cheating.

After taking a three-year break from the Iditarod, Sass placed 16th the following year. He was fourth in 2020 and third last year.

The tiny area of Eureka is four hours northwest of Fairbanks and is where Sass lives.

He won titles in the race between Fairbanks and Whitehorse. 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.