Cooler Runnings: The Shoulda-Been-SOTY Poised To Save Alaska’s Legendary Iditarod

Behold, the punishing brutality of a mild winter: A shortfall of snowflakes in important mountain areas this past season left some ski resorts struggling to open, scraping by on manufactured snow and ultimately closing early. Sales of snowmobiles and ice-fishing shacks have ‘melted down,’ and balaclava vendors are assumed to be ‘feeling the pinch.’ 

In the icebound reaches of Alaska, it is a financial chill that has set in for the famed Iditarod, the 1,000-mile dog sled race from Willow to Nome that plunges pro mushers through imposing mountain passes and across wind-seared tundra, to the tune of ‘feels like’ 100 below when wizened weather apps factor in the wind-chill. The race makes legends out of hardy dogsmen and their furred steeds, but now it struggles to bridge a funding gap stretching north of $1.4 million, with a key raffle undersold and a general sense of fiscal malaise clouding the epic race’s future. And fewer are willing to pit their mettle against the last frontier’s harshest conditions, with this year’s 33 competitors making for the smallest-ever field of Iditarod mushers. 

Looking at this state of affairs, one wonders whether the Iditarod’s fortunes could somehow be reversed — say, with the surprise entry of a superstar athlete, someone hailing from a counterintuitively warm climate, backed by a major sporting-goods manufacturer, packing the pop to clear glacier crevasses and sleeping caribou? Switch?

From the May 2024 Thrasher:

Thrasher: I heard you’re into dog sledding now. Is that true?
Tiago Lemos: Yeah, man. Fuck, it’s so fun, bro. 

How’d you get into it?
My girl–she has a friend that has this huge place with more than 300 dogs. When I saw it I was like, Whoa, I need to do that. And it’s cheap for us to do it because it’s her friend.

So how do you do it? You just get bundled up in a bunch of warm clothes and head down the trail?
Yeah, they give you all the clothes and then they teach you how to manage the dogs, like how to brake. ‘Cause the dogs just want to go, you know? Bro, it’s so fun. It’s the best shit. It feels like you are in a movie.

Could Tiago Lemos’ entry into the 2025 Iditarod inspire a new ‘Cool Runnings’-style biopic based on this epic and potentially true story, with a lucrative merchandising component spanning fur-lined New Balance boots and plush versions of each dog on the team? Would a Primitive collab with sleddog gear makers like 10Square Racing or Mountain Ridge be obligatory? With the Skater of the Year title having so far eluded Tiago Lemos, might his future endeavors be concentrated on landing Team & Trail’s coveted Musher of the Year? 

Tags: balaclavites, Dallas Seavy, El Nino effect, huskies, ice shanties, Iditarod, MOTY, New Balance, Nome, potentially true, Primitive, sled dogs, Team & Trail, Thrasher, Tiago Lemos, tundra