"I feel a bit tired and very elated," he told a TV crew as he pulled Iditarod on Tuesday night after nine days, four hours and 29 minutes on the track. The route offers the equivalent of running from Portland to Los Angeles - with a few steep mountain trails, frozen lakes and eerie windswept plains thrown in.
Seavey, a fighter of light reaching the championship before running along the sled when going uphill, quickly embraced his dogs. They were wrapped in garlands and glory on the line, then moved quickly to dinner and a nap.
The young champion of Willow, Alaska, joins his father's career, Mitch Seavey, who won in 2004, and his grandfather, Dan Seavey, 74, who competed in the inaugural race of the legendary event. In a seemingly normal family, however, each of the tough competition was tight-lipped about the strategy - and to try to win the race.
"He wants to be Dallas Seavey not, the son of Mitch Seavey," said his father, the Office of Alaska.
Seavey finished at 7:29 pm, an hour before the most celebrated female athlete of the Iditarod, Aliy Zirkle, 41, a biology graduate and former U.S. employee Fish and Wildlife Service, who now runs sled dogs full time outside of Two Rivers, Alaska. In 2000, he became the only woman to have won the race Yukon mission, possibly even more exhausting, also held in Alaska.
The race was marked, as always, with tales of the difficulties stressful, miraculous escapes and this year, apparently, lots of sex puppy. Several of the competitors were in heat during the race, including key dogs four times former champion Lance Mackey, Arce, who inspired the members of his team of men to the moon instead of running for part of the race.
In one of a series of dispatches from the race lively blog, this time titled "When Love Goes Wrong Puppy", described Anchorage Daily News reporter Kyle Hopkins, the plight of Alberta musher Karen Ramstead, having seven dogs in heat.
"Unfortunately, every time we stop, things go wrong very quickly," said Ramstead, who had to stop twice during the race to sit out what she calls "Ties" before continuing. "I would not explain it very graphic," said Hopkins.
Then there were Ramey Smyth, the Daily News fell asleep and fell off his sled on the first day of the race, forcing him to hitch a ride with a competitor and pursue their dogs for 40 minutes before catching up.
That was a disaster not only Smyth: Several of her dogs got sick after eating, apparently some poultry skins ill, one had to be withdrawn from the race for the emergency treatment for symptoms of pneumonia, probably hired after vacuuming his own vomit.
There were two miracles.
The first happened to Scott Janssen, owner of a funeral anchor who calls himself the "Mushing undertaker." Janssen and his team were making their way down a steep section of the throat when the Dalzell 9 years old, hoarse, Marshall, suddenly dropped in their tracks, to all appearances, dead.
"I know what death looks like, and he was gone. No one at home," Janssen said in the Daily News. However, by the rapid administration of CPR and mouth to muzzle the dog's chest rub vigorously, Janssen said, the animal suddenly revived - and the Daily News has this poignant video of Marshall's triumphant return to Anchorage not (this time as passenger, a fan.)
"I was crying," said Janssen. "I really love that dog."
Then there was the dog sled team that held runaway Bruce Linton, Linton was demolished after the sled. As Jill Burke of the Office of Alaska tells the story, Linton found the dog and later stops the rest of the team with a single line - wrapped around its neck. The dog lay motionless in the snow, but somehow was revived.
Chief vet Stu Nelson had only one explanation, the Bureau said: "God is looking out for him"
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