BIG LAKE, Alaska (AP) – Citing his age and the costs associated with the race, a two-time champion of the world’s most famous sled dog race said Friday that the 2016 race will likely be his last as a musher.
“This will be my last year, you know I’m not 20 years (old) anymore,” Norwegian musher Robert Sorlie, 58, told The Associated Press just hours after landing in Alaska ahead of this year’s Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
“I think 99 percent, this is the last time,” he said.
The race has its fan-friendly ceremonial start in Anchorage on March 5, with the official start the next day about 50 miles north of Anchorage, in Willow, Alaska.
Sorlie, a firefighter in Oslo, Norway, became the second man born outside of the United States to win the grueling 1,000-mile trek to Nome in 2003. He followed that with another win two years later.