First home to Nome

Press, 19 March 1984, Page 10

First home to Nome

, NZPA-AP Nome, Alaska Dean Osmar, of Clam ; Gulch, won the Iditarod sledge-dog race on Friday, finishing the punishing, 1826 km run from Anchorage to Nome after more than 12 days on the trail. Osmar’s team crossed under the finishing-line on Nome’s Front Street at 12.07 a.m. (local time) for a total elapsed time of 12 days, 15 hours, seven minutes and 33 seconds. He picked up the first prize of $U524,000 ($36,000).

In all, SUSIOO,OOO ($150,000) will be split among the top 20 finishers in the race that began on March 3 in unseasonably warm temperatures just above freezing that left the trail a nightmare of soft snow and melt-water for the mushers.

Osmar, who finished thirteenth in his first Iditarod start two years ago to win “rookie of the Year Award,” was all alone at the finish, with his two closest pursuers, Susan Butcher, of

Manley, and Joe Garnie, of Teller, kilometres back on the trail.

The other 43 teams still in the race were scattered along the trail to as far back as Kaltag, 578 km from Nome.

Butcher is the only woman to finish among the top five mushers in the previous 11 Iditarods over an old gold-rush freight and mail route with a secondplace showing in 1982. This was her seventh bid for the Iditarod crown.