Editor’s note: Richland Source is posting daily updates on Mansfield native Matthew Failor’s efforts at the 2025 Iditarod Sled Dog Race, which began March 3. Stories post daily at 7 a.m. and are updated during the day on the Richland Source Facebook page. This exclusive coverage is made possible through the support of St. Peter’s School and is done with the cooperation of Iditarod.com Insider.
ON THE IDITAROD TRAIL, Alaska –Matthew Failor reached Peace on Earth Thursday morning on the Iditarod trail.
At least the pizza version.
The 43-year-old Mansfield native and sled dog musher pulled into Unalakleet around 2:33 a.m. (AKDT), 866 miles into the 2025 Iditarod race and 262 miles from the burled-arch finish line in Nome.
The St. Peter’s High School graduate (Class of 2000) was still in 12th place as race leader Jesse Holmes rested 120 miles from the finish at the Elim checkpoint, still being closely pursued by mushers Matt Hall and Paige Drobney.
Failor arrived in Unalakleet with nine of his 16 starting dogs still in harness.
Unalakleet, a community of 741 residents known to race fans as the “Gateway to the Bering Sea,” is home to Peace on Earth restaurant.
It’s an eatery contacted with pizza orders from Iditarod fans around the world for hungry mushers a long way from home in a sometimes hostile Alaskan wilderness environment.
Some fans order for specific mushers, while others donate pizzas to volunteers or to any musher who didn’t get an order. Pizzas come with well wishes from family and friends following their favorite mushers on the trail.
The Unalakleet stop is perhaps even more welcome than normal, according to a story published by Alaska Public Media.
Iditarod veteran Eric Kelly is volunteering as a race judge in Unalakleet this year. His job is to make sure everything runs smoothly when a musher arrives. He was expecting a musher by Tuesday afternoon, but told the news outlet it’s been a tough trail.
“Everything’s running a little slower,” he said. “The (Yukon) River, people thought it’d be easy. It’s been really tough. It’s been a hard, bumpy trail. The loop (has) been rough.”
Allie Marie ‘adopts’ her favorite musher
Thanks to the internet, a Florida woman named Allie Marie became a fan of Failor after his first Iditarod race in 2012, a year he finished 47th.
She contacted him in October that year to let him know of her pizza plan in the 2013 race. Allie Marie reminded him a week before the race of her plan.
Failor said he thought about that pizza along the trail in 2013, which is exactly what Allie Marie wanted him to do.
“I did want the thought of hot pizza to be warming him waaay before he got there!” she said at the time.
In the 2013 race, Failor opted not to stop for a rest in Unalakleet, which came on his birthday that year. But the pizzas were delivered and were devoured by hungry mushers as a welcome treat in the cold and windy coastal village.
Allie Marie passed away in October 2013. But her friends around the country, and the world, have kept the pizza tradition alive.
“Allie Marie bought me pizza last year. She said she’d watched me on the tracker and I was her favorite racer. It was such a nice gesture from Florida, 5,000 miles away,” Failor said in 2014.
Nicole Brecht Sopkin, who lived in Texas at the time, was the first to pick up the pizza-ordering torch after seeing it on the internet.
Monica Fisher, a Minnesota resident, said last year her friend Allie Marie wanted to keep it going.
“Allie was definitely our lead dog! And she brought and held us together — as diverse as we were: old, young, families, solos, and from around the world.
“Anja and Ranier from Europe, Jennifer and Lorraine in Florida, Pat in New Orleans, Karen has settled in Seattle, not far from Roxie. Jane, Sasha, Deb (lost to cancer in 2023). I am firmly in the Midwest, Staci’s in Ohio. We would never have come together without Allie,” Fisher said.
Davida Hanson, along with her husband Bret Hanson, own the local pizza shop of Peace on Earth in Unalakleet. She told Iditarod.com Insider last year Failor gets more pizzas than any other musher.
(Above is a video produced in 2024 by Iditarod.Com Insider about the pizza deliveries through Peace on Earth restaurant in Unalakleet.)
“(In 2023), Matt had probably 10 or 12 large pizza orders. He just had fans everywhere. So we take the orders and we do the orders knowing that these mushers have 12 large pizzas waiting at the checkpoint.
“It’s nice because the checkpoint gets a lot of local people up there. So they share, and everybody, of course, the whole town.
“But Matt took his pizza to the next checkpoint (40 miles away in Shaktoolik). I think that’s great! By the time the first runners have gone through and we have 25 or 30 pizzas waiting at the checkpoint, everybody is just pizza’d out here. (Matt) had a great idea,” she said.
The “pizza delivery” to Shaktoolik is one Failor continued in 2024, pulling it from his sled and handing it to checkpoint workers.
And now a racing update:
Failor left the Kaltag 2 checkpoint on Wednesday at 10:52 a.m. (AKDT) to begin the 81-mile journey to Unalakleet, breaking the run into two parts with a rest stop on the trail along the way.
He made the trip in about 16 hours.
It’s a familiar journey for Failor in his 14th Iditarod race in a race map revised in 2025 due to low snowfall in southeast Alaska. Both of the traditional northern and southern routes include the Kaltag to Nome checkpoints.
From Unalakleet, Failor will visit “old friends” in Shaktoolik (mile 908), Koyuk (958), Elim (1,008), White Mountain (1,057) and Safety (1,106) before cruising down into Nome.
It’s a welcome return to traditional Iditarod racing after hundreds of miles on the frozen Yukon River, a venue that hammered mushers with a sand blizzard early in the race on the Tanana River.
This year’s race is the longest in Iditarod history with the revised route.
All mushers must take a mandatory eight-hour rest stop at White Mountain, the next-to-last checkpoint in the race.
Alaskan Husky Adventures teammate in 22nd place
Rookie musher Dane Baker, a handler who works for Failor’s kennel in Willow, Alaska, was mushing along in 22nd place on Thursday morning.
Baker, racing a “puppy team” of younger dogs from the kennel, had 11 dogs in harness as he mushed his team south of Kaltag 2, 765 miles into the 1,128-mile race.
One musher scratches, two mushers withdrawn from Iditarod
Three rookie mushers left the Iditarod trail on Wednesday, two of whom were pulled from the race for not being competitive. A third voluntarily scratched.
— Rookie Iditarod musher Quince Mountain of Mountain, Wisc., and rookie Iditarod musher Sydnie Bahl of Wasilla, Alaska were both withdrawn from the race (Wednesday) at the Grayling checkpoint. While both wanted to continue the race, the decision was made based on rule 36 of the official Iditarod race that allows officials to pull teams that are no longer competitive.
Rule 36 states: Competitiveness: A team may be withdrawn that is out of the competition and is not in a position to make a valid effort to compete. The Race Marshal may consider, but is not limited to, weather, trail conditions and the overall pace of the Race when invoking this rule.
Withdrawal is a process that must be imposed by a three-judge panel, either by a majority or unanimous vote, and which has the effect of involuntarily eliminating the musher and team from the race but which does not imply any deliberate misconduct or violation. The team and musher must leave the trail and will be assisted by the ITC. This process can be found in Rule 51 of the Official Rules of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race®. Mountain had 10 dogs in harness when he arrived at the Grayling checkpoint.
Bahl had 13 dogs in harness when she arrived at Grayling checkpoint at 6:14 a.m. Mountain had 10 dogs in harness when he arrived at Grayling at 12:25 p.m.
— Rookie Iditarod musher Justin Olnes of Fairbanks, Alaska scratched Wednesday afternoon at the Eagle Island checkpoint, stating that his team needed more rest to stay competitive. Olnes arrived at the Eagle Island checkpoint and then departed with 10 dogs in harness. Shortly after departing the checkpoint, Olnes returned back to the Eagle Island checkpoint and voluntarily scratched in the best interest of his team.
Ten of the 33 teams (30 percent) that began the race March 3 in Fairbanks have left the competition. A year ago, nine of the 38 teams (24 percent) that began the race left before the finish.
Our exclusive local coverage of Matthew Failor in the 2025 Iditarod is made possible with the cooperation of the Iditarod Trail Committee. To learn more about the non-profit organization, visit www.iditarod.com. You can also learn how to become an Iditarod Insider and access all of the live streams, GPS tracking system and video interviews with Failor and other mushers.
