“This is a special team,” Mitch Seavey says of his 2012 sled dogs, and he’s got the split times to prove it.
Seavey was second into the Cripple checkpoint, arriving 2:16pm Thursday afternoon. (Jim Lanier arrived there first, winning a first-to-Cripple prize of $3,000.)
Seavey, however, arrived in Cripple first among the mushers who’d completed their 24-hour layovers (Lanier hasn’t), and he did so with a sizable margin: more than 90 minutes separated Mitch Seavey from his son, Dallas, who pulled into Cripple at 3:58pm, second among those who’d completed their 24.
KNOM trail reporter Laureli Kinneen caught up with Mitch Seavey in Cripple, where the 2004 Iditarod champ was justifiably happy with his dogs, saying that “they just don’t even flinch” in making good runs on the trail. “I’m very proud of ’em,” he says. “They’re stepping up.”
As for the race ahead, Seavey says he has a plan, but he certainly won’t tell anyone – at least, not willingly. He told Laureli that he wrote down his mushing plan but then lost the plans on the trail, potentially leaving them for someone else to find.
But no matter: “I think I know what to do,” he says.
And as for his son, Mitch says he’d be “proud” to see Dallas win, but ultimately, “I’m out here to win this race, and unfortunately, that means I’d have to beat him, too.”
Hear our interview with Mitch Seavey in Cripple:
