NOME, Alaska (AP) – When the winner of the Iditarod has come in to the finish line under the burled arch, it doesn’t mean the race is over. In fact, it won’t be done for days.
All the mushers who haven’t scratched are allowed to continue to Nome, and the city welcomes each until the red lantern – carried by the last place musher – arrives. Right now, that musher is 55-year-old Ellen Halverson of Wasilla, Alaska, who is nearly 350 miles (563 kilometers)from the finish line.
In most races, the lag between the first- and last-place musher reaching the finish line on Nome’s Front Street can take a long time. Last year, California musher Cindy Abbott took nearly 13 1/2 days to reach Nome with the red lantern, almost five days longer than winner Dallas Seavey.
Every musher in between got a warm welcome to Nome, and that’s by design.
After the first Iditarod in 1973, a former Nome mayor said at the end of the musher’s banquet that everyone in the race who finished was a hero.