Jessie Holmes Wins the 2026 Iditarod!

 

Jessie Holmes, the reigning 2025 winner of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, the Last Great Race on Earth, repeats as the 2026 champion. Holmes led the race most of the way, took a commanding lead on the Yukon, and never looked back.  So comfortable was his lead that he left White Mountain (mile 898) yesterday at 11:27 Alaska time yesterday, 17 minutes past his required 8-hour rest. He arrived at the finish line at 5:32 pm last night, making his official finish time 9 days, 7 hours, 32 minutes, and 52 seconds. Although his dog Zeus was in the lead most of the race, Holmes put Polar in front for the last stretch, and Polar was the first dog across the finish line.

Travis Beals came in second at 9d 11h 58m 26s, some 3½ hours after Holmes, followed by Jeff Deeter (9d 15h 10m 37s). Paige Drobny (9d 15h 38m 48s) came in fourth, less than a half-hour behind Deeter. 

Wade Marrs has left Safety (mile 953) and should be the fifth finisher sometime later today. After Marrs, there are 24 teams that have crossed the frozen Norton Sound and are on the Nome peninsula. Five of the teams have left White Mountain, three are still working off their mandatory 8-hour rest at White Mountain, eight are out of Elim (mile 852), five out of Koyuk (mile 804), and three still in Koyuk.  Rookie Adam Lindenmuth has left Shaktoolik (mile 754) and is somewhere out on the Norton ice. 

There were three scratches announced yesterday. Sadly, Mille Pirsild pulled out at the Elim checkpoint, 123 miles from the finish line, following the death of Charley, a four-year-old female on her team. Porsild is an experienced Danish racer, was the 2020 Iditarod Rookie of the Year, and has mushed dogs in Antarctica. Charley's body has been flown to Unalakleet, where a necropsy will be conducted by a board-certified veterinary pathologist to determine the cause of death. Iditarod rules state that if a dog dies during the race, it results in an immediate scratch from the race for that musher.

Jody Potts-Joseph and Grayson Bruton both voluntarily scratched back at Unalakleet. Rookie racer Potts-Joseph had a run-in with a bison on the trail back before McGrath (mile 311). It reportedly charged her and her team repeatedly, although it stopped each time short of the dog team. She hid behind a tree and tried to fire a gun but it jammed. She resorted to chanting "Go away, have mercy on us, leave us alone,” in her native Hän Gwich’in tongue, and the bison backed off before there were any injuries to either dogs or humans. But the encounter left her and the team shook and she was in last or near-last place from then on. She finally scratched after symptoms of kennel cough bagen appearing in her team. However, she still managed to get to Unalakleet before Brunton, who was competing in his second Iditarod. 

Jessie Holmes, originally from Phenix City, Alabama, a town so poor it can't even afford the vowel "o,"  has competed in the Iditarod every year since 2018, when he was the Iditarod Rookie of the Year, but he's probably most famous as a reality-TV star in National Geographic's Life Below Zero. He is the third competitor in the 54-year history of the Iditarod to repeat the year after winning for the first time. The other two were Susan Butcher in 1986-1987 and Lance Mackey in 2007-2008. Both went on to win four titles.

R.I.P., Charley. Impermanence is swift.

Canadiens 3, Bruins 2 (OT)

 

Pavel Zacha scored two goals for the Boston Bruins, but the team let Montreal tie the game up in the second period and neither team scored in the third. In the OT, the Habs' Cole Caufield scored a goal, his 40th of the season, beating a personal record and tying a 32-year-old Montreal record. Big deal. 

That's two straight OT road losses for Boston (37-23-8), who are 4-3-3 in their last ten games. They're in fourth place in the Atlantic Division are tied with Detroit at 82 points for a wild card berth, one point ahead of Carolina. 

The Winnipeg Jets (28-28-11) come to the Garden on Thursday for a 7:00 pm game.

Iditarod: Jessie Holmes to Repeat as Champion

 

Jessie Holmes and Travis Beals have both arrived at White Mountain (mile 898) and are almost assured to finish first and second in this year's Iditarod. Holmes has a four-hour lead on Beals, and with only 77 miles left to the finish line, it would take nothing short of a miracle (or a disaster, depending on your POV) for Beals to catch up with him. 

Holmes will repeat as Iditarod champion. All teams are required to take an 8-hour rest at White Mountain, and we can be assured that Holmes will leave as soon as he's allowed in order to maintain his lead.

Of the next three racers, Paige Drobney was the first to Elim (mile 852), the checkpoint before White Mountain. Jeff Deeter pulled in a half-hour after her. Both took roughly 3½-hour breaks there, and while they were resting, Wade Marrs blew through the checkpoint without a rest, and is now in third place. Drobney and Deeter both left Elim about an hour after Marrs passed through and are dueling it out for fourth place.

Paige has been taking longish breaks at every checkpoint the past day or two and is down to 10 dogs, signs that her team is tired and need frequent rests and TLC. It' a testament to the humanitarian treatment of the dogs in the race that she's basically forfeited at least a second-place finish to care for her team rather than force them on past the point of endurance to try and catch up to Holmes.

Porsild and Dyche are still in Elim. Hall, Phillips, Eklund, and Kaiser are enroute to the checkpoint, and three other teams are back in Koyuk (mile 804). Six teams have left Shaktoolik (mile 754) and are presumably on the open, exposed stretch of trail crossing the frozen Norton Sound. The rest of the field are stretched between Shaktoolik and Kaltag (mile 629), and no team is still back on the Yukon. 

Billionaire "expedition class" racer Kjell Rokke has completed the trail, crossing the finish line mid-day yesterday at 7 days, 22 hours, and 40 minutes. I have mixed feelings about the new "expedition class" contestants, but regardless of assistance, etc., nearly eight days in the Alaskan wilderness in mid-March while covering nearly 1,000 miles is still an achievement. Congratulations are due Rokke (as long as he doesn't swagger around saying that he "won" this year's Iditarod). Also, let's appreciate his generous donations to the race committee and to the indigenous settlements along the route.

Thank you, sir.

Devils 4, Bruins 3, (OT)

 

No, no, no! That's not how you're supposed to do it! The Bruins blow a 2-0, first-period lead and squander a two-goal performance by Pastrnak to lose to the New Jersey Devils in OT, 4-3. 

Pasta and Zacha both scored in the first but the Devils responded with two goals of their own in the second. The Devils took a 3-2 lead early in the third before Pasta scored his second goal two minutes later to tie it up. And then, in the OT, the Devils' Jack Hughes (you might remember him from the Olympics) scored the game-winning goal and handed the Bruins (37-23-7) a road loss.

Tonight, the Bruins head up to Montreal to play the arch-rival Canadiens (36-20-10) and end this three-game road trip. Puck drops at 7:00.    

Celtics 120, Suns 112

 

Mr. Brown with 41 points. Mr. White with 21. Mr. Tatum, 21, too. Mr. Pritchard with 19 off the bench. Brown and Tatum both had seven rebounds, six defensive and one offensive each. 

Devin Booker had 40 points for the Suns, but it was all seeds and stems for Phoenix after that. The entire game was actually pretty close - no team scored more than five points than the other for all four periods. But somehow, when the clock finally expired, the C's had eight more points than the Suns.

Boston (45-23) has managed to move up to within 3½ of Detroit in the Eastern Conference standings, but Detroit somehow managed to arrange two consecutive games against the lowly Washington Wizards tonight and tomorrow, so the Celtics will have to keep pushing hard to cut deeper into that margin, starting with Wednesday night's game against Golden State. Once our kryptonite team, the Warriors have fallen on hard times (33-35), despite an all-star roster that includes Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler, Draymond Green, and our old friends Kristaps Porziņģis and Al Horford. 

  

Iditarod: Holmes in the Lead

 

Shaktoolik (population 212) is located on Norton Sound on a barrier island at the mouth of the Shaktoolik River. On Cape Denbigh, 12 miles to the northwest, the 6,000- to 8,000-years-old Iyatayet site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

The town of Shaktoolik (Unaliq for "scattered things") was occupied as early as 1839 and first mapped in 1842 by the Imperial Russian Navy. Reindeer herds were managed in the area around 1905. The town was originally located some six miles up the Shaktoolik River and moved to the mouth of the River in 1933. That site was prone to severe storms and winds, however, and the village relocated to its present, more sheltered location in 1967. There are currently only two occupied dwellings at the old townsite.

Shaktoolik has served as a checkpoint (mile 754) for the Iditarod since the first race in 1973 and is known for being one of the windiest stretches of the trail, where mushers often encounter severe snowdrifts.  Jessie Holmes was the first to arrive there this year, and he had a big enough lead that he was able to take a 3½ break there and still be the first to leave. Baring a disaster, Holmes is winning the race again this year.

Paige Drobney was second to Shaktoolik,  arriving almost three hours after Holmes. She chose to take a 6 hour break there and while she was resting, Travis Beale, Mille Pirsild, and Wade Marrs all passed through the checkpoint before she finally left. That would seemingly put her back in fifth place, but one has to assume that Travis, Mille, and Wade are going to have to rest their dogs somewhere on the trail ahead, and Paige's well-rested team should be able to pass them and regain some of her standing. With only a little over 200 miles left to the race, it seems unlikely at this point that she can catch up to Holmes' well-rested team three hours up ahead, but this is the Iditarod and anything can happen.

Three teams are currently resting in Shaktoolik. Jeff Deeter arrived about a half hour before Paige left, and Riley Dyche and Matt Hall arrived after she left. Five more teams are back in Unalakleet (mile 714) and a whopping 15 are between Kaltag (mile 629) and Unalakleet. The last two teams are enroute to Kaltag from Nulato (mile 582). There still has been only one scratch so far this year, and this far in, I'd be surprised to see anyone else drop out.

From Shakatoolik, the trail proceeds north to Reindeer Cove, crosses the frozen Norton Sound to Koyuk (mile 804), and then proceeds along the northern shore of the sound to the finish line in Nome (mile 975). 

"Expedition" update: Steve Curtis, who's been listed at the McGrath checkpoint (mile 311) since last Thursday, has officially bowed out, as has Thomas Waerner, who made it to Unalakleet along with billionaire Kjell Rokke, but scratched when he saw symptoms of "kennel cough" among some of his dogs. Rokke has pressed on without his guide and was at White Mountain (mile 898), a required 8-hour rest for racers, but those rules don't apply to billionaires and he'll press on to the finish line in Nome.

Iditarod: From the River to the Sea

 

Sorry if the headline triggers you, but the Iditarod race has now proceeded from Kaltag, the last checkpoint on the (Yukon) River, down toward Unalakleet on the (Bering) Sea, and this is the only coverage of the race with balls enough to use the world's most obvious metaphor to describe this stretch.

As of 7:00 am Alaska time, nine teams have left Kaltag (mile 639). With the mandatory 24-hour and Yukon 8 rests now completed, it's a flat-out race to the finish line from this point forward.

Jessie Holmes was the first through Kaltag at around 4:30 pm, pausing at the checkpoint for only 15 minutes. Paige Drobney passed through some three hours later, followed by Millie Pirsild some 2½ hours after that at about 10 pm. 

Travis Beals was the next musher to arrive at Kaltag, but instead of passing straight through like the first three racers, he took a three-hour rest there and didn't leave until 1:26 pm, after Riley Dyche and Wade Marrs had passed through. So after Holmes, Drobney, and Pirsild, the order now is Dyche (4th place), Marrs (5th), and  Beals (6th).  

Michelle Phillips arrived in Kaltag after Beals had left. She took a 4½ hour rest before leaving at 6:34 this morning. Jeff Deeter passed through the checkpoint while Phillips was resting. Matt Hall arrived after Phillips left, took a three-hour rest, and still managed to leave before another team arrived.  So the next three teams, completing the nine out of Kaltag, are Deeter (7th place), Phillips (8th), and Hall (9th).

Three teams (Ryan Redington, Lauro Eklund, and Peter Kaiser) are still in Kaltag. 

Behind the first twelve, the race is finally starting to spread out a little. There are three teams still heading to Kaltag from the previous Nulato checkpoint (mile 582), four teams back at Galena (mile 545), five teams between Ruby (mile 495) and Galena, and two teams still in Ruby. "Expedition class" racer Steve Curtis remains all the way back in McGrath (mile 311), where he's been for the last three days - I guess he likes it there (I hope he likes it there). Billionaire Kjell Rokke is all the way up to Shaktoolik (mile 754), while his "assistant," Thomas Waerner, is now behind him at Unalakleet (mile 714).

One last dash to the finish line. This is it, folks, and last year's winner, Jessie Holmes, has a three-hour lead on the pack.

Bruins 3, Capitals 2 (SO)

 

While the Celtics were beating the Washington Wizards up in the Garden, the Bruins were down in Washington beating the Capitols. It took a shootout to win, but they got the job done.

Charlie McAvoy (BU, Class of '16) scored both of Boston's goals during regulation, his 8th and 9th of the season. Swayman made 25 saves on 27 shots (.926) in the net.

No one score in OT and it took nine rounds of shootout before Fraser Minten finally scored the only goal after regulation ended. The road win ends a seven-game road losing streak for the Bruins. 

Boston (37-23-6) still qualifies for a playoff spot by a single point ahead of Columbus, but are now tied with Detroit at 80 points each. However, since it took the Red Wings one more game to earn those points than the Bruins, the tiebreaker puts Boston ahead of Detroit in the Wild Card standings. 

The Bruins will head down to New Jersey to play the Devils (33-31-2) on Monday (7:00 pm).   

Celtics 111, Wizards 100

 

The boys are back in town and back on the court - the midwest road trip is over and Mr. Brown, Mr. White, and Mr. Tatum are all back in the lineup. Last night, they beat the Washington Wizards by 11, but then, the Wizards are the team that let Bam Adebayo score 80 points on them.  

The Celtics were more modest. Mr. Queta scored 24 points, while Mr. Tatum scored 20 and snagged 14 rebounds. Mr. Brown scored 16 points, and both Mr. White and Mr. Garza scored 15. Nobody hogged the ball like they were playing for a Miami Heat fighting for relevancy. The Celts were professionals - they took to the court, did what had to be done, and left with the victory. No showboating.

Boston remain 1½ games up on the Knicks in the division and 4½ back from the Pistons in the conference. With 15 games left to the season, it's looking more and more like that's how the final standings will look before the playoffs.

The Phoenix Suns (39-28) are coming to the Garden. They'll play the Celtics Monday night starting at 7:30 pm.    

UConn 5, BU 3

 

That's it. Season's over. The BU Terriers lose in the Hockey East quarterfinals and are eliminated from any further post-season consideration. 

Friendly reminder that they made it to the final game of the NCAA's Frozen Four tournament last year, and were ranked No. 1 in the country for at least one week early in this 2025/2026 season. 

This afternoon, the Terriers tied the game early in the second period with a Tynan Lawrence goal, and again last in the period with a Jack Murtagh goal. After UConn came back with two more goals early in the third, Ben Merrill made it competitive again with a goal midway through the final period. But that was it for the Terriers, and UConn hit an open-netter late in the game for the final score.

This team won the Red-Hot Hockey tournament in Madison Square Garden, beating No. 9 Cornell, and made it to the Beanpot title game. They avenged their loss to BC in the Beanpot finale with a sweep of the Eagles two weeks later, finishing the season 2-2 against arch-rival Boston College. 

Overall, this season's Terriers were 17-17-2 overall, and 12-12-0 in conference play. We had hoped for more and better, but .500 at the very least is not losing.      

Can't win 'em all. Better luck next year, Terriers. See you again this October.

P.S. One final note. I just heard on the Terriers' radio broadcast that The Dugout bar on Commonwealth Avenue closed this year. Heartbreaking news. Back in the 1970s, when I was at BU, The Dugout was the preferred hangout for three very distinct groups - the Terriers hockey team, the BU Geology Department, and administrative staff for the College of Liberal Arts. I was a geology student back then with a student job at the CLA, so I spent a lot of time at The Dugout (or "Doo-jow" as we called it), rubbing elbows with the hockey players. Good times. I'm sorrier to see The Dugout gone than I am about the end of this season.

Iditarod: The Further Adventures of Holmes and Drobney on the Yukon

 

Jessie Holmes has about a two-hour lead on Paige Drobney. Both have completed their mandatory Yukon 8-hour rest back in Ruby (mile 495), and both pulled out of Galena (mile 545) late last night. I was kind of surprised that Drobney chose to take her break when she did, rather than shoot ahead of Holmes when she had the chance to take the lead and put pressure on Holmes to catch back up. Shows what I know about mushing strategy. 

Riley Dyche, Travis Beals, and Wade Marrs pulled out of Galena after the leaders, but neither have completed their Yukon 8's yet. Mille Porsild, who has taken her mandatory rest, has been in Galena for about 4½ hours as of 6:00 am Alaska time, but will probably leave soon. 

Six other teams (Michelle Phillips, Peter Kaiser, Jeff Deeter, Matt Hall, Jessie Royer, and Ryan Redington) are also in Galena. Ryan's the only one of those six to have taken his Yukon 8, so strategically he's in fourth place behind Jessie, Paige, and Mille. Phillips, Kaiser, and Deeter have been in Galena for a little over four hours now, so it's hard to tell yet if they're on their Yukon 8's or just resting up before their next push, like Mille.

It's currently -6° F in Ruby, but expected to "warm" up to 7° today. Surprisingly, that's considered "too warm" for some of the teams, and some have said that the trail prior to Ruby was slow because it was so warm out. Generally, they seem to prefer to rest in the "heat" of the day and do their running during the long, cold nights. Or maybe it's better to run and keep warm during the coldest hours of the night. In any event, teams arriving at Galena now at the start of the day might choose to take their break there during the day, and start again in eight hours as the temperatures start dropping again.

Rounding out the field, four teams have left Ruby, seven more are still in Ruby, and the last ten have left Cripple (mile 425). There still has been only one scratch so far.

There are two more checkpoints ahead on the Yukon - Nulato (mile 582) and Kaltag (mile 629). After Kaltag, the trail leaves the Yukon and drops through the Kaltag Portage down to Unalakleet (mile 714) on the shore of the Bering Sea. 

One final note: billionaire "expedition class" racers Kjell Rokke and Thomas Waerner, who aren't required to take mandatory rests and can get unlimited assistance, including fresh sled dogs, are way ahead of the field and have already left Kaltag. Meanwhile, the third "expedition" racer, Steve Curtis, is still all the way back in McGrath (mile 311). This puts the vets and checkpoint assistants at unnecessary risk, as they have to be at the often remote and inhospitable checkpoints ahead of Rokke and Waerner and then wait around long enough for Curtis to eventually make his leisurely appearance. Curtis should scratch now, IMHO, even if he's having the time of his life and "paid for" the privilege, for the sake of the health and safety of the volunteers.    

   

Iditarod: Holmes and Drobney on the Yukon

 

Jessie Holmes and Paige Drobney have both reached Ruby (mile 495), the first checkpoint on the Yukon River. Holmes is in the lead, arriving at Ruby a little over two hours before Drobney. Paige had left Cripple (mile 425) some 2½ hours before Jessie, but Holmes, who had taken a 5-hour rest at Cripple, still arrived at Ruby sooner that Paige, who had blown through Cripple with only a 16-minute break. One assumes that Drobney must have rested somewhere along the trail between the two checkpoints, and Jessie had passed her enroute. 

Both are currently resting in Ruby while 14 other teams have left Cripple and are presently enroute to Ruby.

The race looks like it will come down to a showdown between 2025 champion Holmes and contender Drobney. Both still have nearly-full teams of dogs (Holmes 15 and Drobney 14) and the win may come down to time/rest management and strategy more than speed and power. At this point, I'm pulling for Team Squid - nothing against Holmes, but he's had his championship and Drobney has been a close contender for years now and is due her win.    

After Drobney, Ryan Reddington led the next team out of Cripple. Mille Porsild and Matt Hall left about 3½ to 4 hours after Redington, and four other teams (Jeff Deeter, Riley Dyche, Travis Beals, and Michelle Phillips) about an hour or so after Hall. Six teams are still in Cripple, and the last 11 are somewhere between Ophir (mile 352) and Cripple. All teams have taken their mandatory 24-hour rests. That's pretty close for this stage of the race, and so far there's still been only one scratch.

Ruby (population 131) is a former gold-rush town on the Yukon River which became an Athabaskan village. From Ruby, the trail follows the Yukon, the longest river in Alaska, for the next 234 miles to the Kaltag checkpoint (mile 629). The stretch of trail along the river is swept by strong winds which can wipe out the trail and drop the windchill to below −100° F. It's currently -9° in Ruby, and the Accuweather forecast is for mostly sunny skies but very cold, with a low of -18° by Tuesday night. However, an even greater hazard is the uniformity of the trail along the Yukon, as the mushers, suffering at this point from sleep deprivation, have report hallucinations along this long stretch. 

With an 8-hour rest required along the Yukon, it will be interesting to see when and where Jessie and Paige choose take their breaks as they try to out-maneuver one another for the lead. As of 9:30 am Alaska time, Holmes has been at Ruby for 4½ hours - will he rest another 3½ and complete his mandatory 8? Paige, fresh off her rest on the trail, has been in Ruby for 2½ hours - will she leave there before Jessie to regain the lead and then take her mandatory later? 

You've heard of 3D chess. This is -0° chess.