More than fifteen days after it began, the 2004 Iditarod is over. At 12:50:36 pm local time Perry Solmonson drove his team across the finish line and, as the last competitor to finish the race, became the “Red Lantern” winner for this year.
The Iditarod, called “The Last Great Race”, is a 1,049 mile sleddog race that commemorates the 1925 serum run from Anchorage to Nome in which a relay of sleddog teams carried diphtheria anti-toxin to save the children of Nome. Although a statue of Balto, the lead dog of the team that ran the last leg of the relay, stands in Central Park in New York, it was Leonard Seppala’s great lead dog Togo who led the longest and most difficult leg of the journey across bare ice.
This year’s winner, Mitch Seavey, came in March 16 with a winning time of 9:12:20:22. Is there any other race in the world in which the last competitor to finish is “honored” quite like this?
