The Iditarod crowned Jesse Terry its Rookie of the Year in the early morning hours Thursday. The award goes to the fastest first-timer to complete the race to Nome.
As Terry and his team of a dozen dogs barreled down Front Street in Nome, his headlamp swung left and right, scanning the small crowd assembled under the race’s Burled Arch finish line. As he approached, Terry’s eyes locked onto his wife’s. He stomped on his drag brake, kicked his snow hooks into the powdery ground and went straight to her, briefly stopping to pet his dogs along the way.
“I’ve just been missing her, and I've been calling her at checkpoints,” Terry said. “And it's just really, really special to share my life with her and see her again.”
The nearly 1,000 miles of trail between the race’s official start in Willow and the finish in Nome is known for its challenges. The Topkok Blowhole about 50 miles east of Nome has a reputation for disrupting races.
Terry said his sled blew over several times in the notoriously windy corridor, but his 12 dogs forged forward.
“And they just kept charging. And then it was just the cycle of energy of them, I'm seeing them perform and excel,” Terry said. “And they knew I was excited, and they just kept going.”
With fellow rookie Sam Martin trailing by just under an hour, the dog team’s tenacity proved invaluable. Terry set off from White Mountain late Wednesday afternoon and made it to the Safety checkpoint just after midnight. He spent just nine minutes in the final checkpoint of the race before setting out in complete darkness to the finish line.
Terry was one of three Indigenous rookies in this year’s race. He is Anishinaabe and calls Sioux Lookout, Ontario home.
While it was his first time in Nome, he’s been to Alaska before. Last year, he placed third in the Yukon Quest 450 sled dog race.
The win gave him confidence that his team could return to Alaska, this time for the state’s longest race.
“I think that I had a team of dogs that was capable of it, so the idea of showing them and showing us what they're capable of. And I think that Rookie of the Year was definitely possible for them,” Terry said.
Terry’s wife, Mary England, doled out steaks to the team. She admitted they flew in with them after seeing the prices in Nome. The two kneeled together with lead dogs Jitterbug and Moonwatcher at the end of the finish chute for a traditional photo. Smiling ear to ear, Terry put one arm around his lead dog and the other around his wife.
“Most of these dogs we raised, and so to see them perform and do what they do and have her here, here is really special,” he said.
Terry’s Rookie of the Year run finished with a time of 10 days, 13 hours and 36 minutes.