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.