IditaProject Forum

You can find Da Sass on Front Street in Nome currently. Just look for the crowd and lights, and listen for the cheering.
Congratulations to the new Iditarod Champion

Was able to see finish before power glitch. DeeDee was there to welcome Sass. Does he not have family?

adella wrote:Was able to see finish before power glitch. DeeDee was there to welcome Sass. Does he not have family?

Yes Adella. His father Mark should have been in Nome! I met him a few years back when Brent won YQ...His father is an incredible person, humble, simple, happy...He also has a sister and several cousins...and I think a brother....

Yes his dad was at the finish line as somewhere(KTUU?) I heard DeeDee saying that he got quite emotional & that he spends his winters in Alaska helping Brent so he was overcome to see his son finally reach his goal of winning the Iditarod!

Woot! So very cool!

Brent has been my favorite for a LONG time (before he ever came on the ID radar) from following the Yukon Quest. He had a white board at home with a list of "Things to Do" - it shows various chores, mending dog houses, etc... and at the bottom said "Win Yukon Quest".

Well, he achieved that three times, so I'm guessing added "Win Iditarod" to that white board. He's had his ups and downs - particularly at ID - so I'm thrilled that he finally got here by running a smart and measured race.

Aaron B said something about Brent and Dallas having made some gutsy moves to get to the front and that he, Aaron, wasn't willing to gamble like that, but tbh, I never saw either of them make a huge move. They made some long runs, but nothing that they hadn't trained for, and nowhere close to some of the runs Brent has made during YQ in the past.

He taught his dogs mental fortitude (which is his specialty), bred and trained in strength and stamina, and most of all, his dogs are his life.

As he mentioned before, he bred all the dogs himself - picked the breeding and brought them up as puppies. His blond lead dog Slater (along with siblings, Woody and Pink) were born in a tent in the artic (Brent leads expeditions up there every spring - mostly, it would seem, for Norwegian students) and lived their first couple of weeks there. Slater's bloodlines are Wold/King/Mackey/R. Smyth.

To see the team trotting down Front Street, with speed and purpose was amazing.

From the finish vid:

"I had to make it interesting at the end. It was very, very windy out there, and we took a tumble and went off the trail, and I thought I was just going to have to bunker down and see how the cards fell, but we perservered, got up, found the trail again... I don't even know what the wind was blowing out there - I couldn't see anything...the dogs - the only reason we got out of there is because they trusted me to get them back to the trail, and once we got back to the trail, they just took off at 100 mph again and we were able to stay on the trail and get in here. It was a lot of work... but it was a lot of fun. A lot more stories now!

It's awesome, it's a dream come true. When I started mushing my goal was to win the YQ and win the ID - and I've checked them both off the list now. It's awesome - every one of these dogs I've raised since they were puppies <voice breaks slightly> and we've been working towards this goal the whole time, and we're here! It's crazy." <in this shot, you can see his dad standing behind him>.

<Brent is known for crying at the end of races, from pride in his dogs, and tbh, he was remarkably composed for him >

Re. beating Dallas:
"To be honest, that just makes it sweeter, you know, he's the best right now, and being able to keep him at bay this whole race and race against the best guy in the business, that just makes this victory even sweeter."

YEA! Love it that he bred and raised his entire team!

That's really cool insite Elsie, didn't know one of the pups was born in the artic & also about the bloodlines