Editor’s note: Richland Source posted daily updates on Mansfield native Matthew Failor’s efforts at the 2025 Iditarod Sled Dog Race, which began March 3. Stories posted daily at 7 a.m. and were updated during the day on the Richland Source Facebook page. This exclusive coverage was made possible through the support of St. Peter’s School and was done with the cooperation of Iditarod.com Insider.
NOME, Alaska — Theo Failor finished his first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Saturday night.
The 21-month-old son of Matthew Failor rode along with his dad down Front Street in Nome to help complete the longest race of his father’s Iditarod racing career.
The Mansfield native raced under the famed burled arch in Nome on Alaska’s west coast on Saturday at 7:37 p.m. (AKDT), finishing the record 1,128-mile race in 12 days, seven hours and 37 minutes.
Failor stopped near the finish to pick up the precious cargo that his remaining seven dogs helped deliver to the end.
The St. Peter’s High School graduate stepped from his sled and slid into the arms of his wife, Liz, and then his parents, Tim and Cheryl Failor, who made the trip from Mansfield to join their son at the finish.
Failor finished 11th overall in a field that began with 33 mushers, outracing fellow veteran Nicolas Petit, a native of France who immigrated to the United States, in a 71-mile duel from White Mountain.
A tired, but elated, Failor talked about his competition with his old friend Petit, who beat him to the finish line last year when he finished 12th while Failor was 13th.
Failor recalled a line from the 2006 comedy “Talladega Nights” in talking about a man he has raced against in the Iditarod for more than a decade.
“You know, Nic Petit is back there, right?” Failor told an Iditarod.com Insider interviewer.
“So, Liz says that I quote too many movies … and I wonder if the crowd can get this movie quote.
“The whole time (down the stretch), I kept thinking, ‘Frenchy can drive.’ Does anyone know that one?
“Yeah, ‘Frenchy can drive.’ But I beat him today. Ricky Bobby won today,” Failor said with a laugh.
Racing with his Alaskan Husky Adventures 17th-Dog Team, it’s Failor’s third straight top-15 finish and his second-best ever finish. He was eighth in 2023.
Musher Jesse Holmes won the 2025 race on Friday, finishing in 10 days, 14 hours and 55 minutes.
Epic finish to wild Iditarod adventure
The epic finish in primetime on a Saturday night on Front Street in Nome was a fitting conclusion to the 43-year-old Failor’s 14th Iditarod journey across the wilderness of the nation’s largest frontier.
The race began March 3 in Fairbanks, moved almost 300 miles from its normal official re-start in Willow, outside Anchorage.
The decision to move the race, which added more than 100 miles to the traditional northern and southern routes, was triggered by the Iditarod Trail Committee in February due to low snowfall on the ground in southeast Alaska.
It was a relocation Failor didn’t think was necessary.
His own experience on the trail told him the traditional and planned southern route would have worked.
“It’s hard for me to know because I wasn’t on the trail. The trail breakers the Iditarod sends out have a lot of experience and they’ve done it before,” the Mansfield native and veteran sled dog musher told Richland Source before the race.
“Obviously, I trust their judgement. (But) I know from my experience as a 13-time Iditarod musher, we have gone over many (non-snow covered) sections of trail.
“In my opinion, I was ready … my dogs were ready,” he said during a taping of the News Man Weekly podcast.
Since its inception in 1973, low snow conditions have prompted organizers to switch the start to Fairbanks on three other occasions, most recently in 2017.
Failor said mushers used that route in 2014 when there was little or no snow cover in areas.
“Everybody survived. There were some broken sleds and some mushers broke some ankles and ribs and stuff. But none of the dogs got hurt in those sections.
“We humanize (the dogs) and (people) see one photo and they fear the worst. When you have no snow, the dogs have great footing. They can easily move over grass and dirt. The sled doesn’t glide, so the sled takes a beating and the musher’s ankles and feet take a beating, too,” he said.
“I think a lot of mushers got scared because they feared the worst. They would rather run on all snow. But we signed up for the Iditarod because we want to run the Iditarod trail,” Failor said.
The revised route includes hundreds of miles on the frozen Yukon River, which he said is a mile wide in places.
“(That) can be very challenging. In the wind, there is no place to hide. Some of those people hoping for a Fairbanks start might be eating crow. They might be regretting it.
“I would rather run 50 miles on dirt than 600 miles on the Yukon River. So we will see what happens.
“Be careful what you wish for. Mother Nature will throw her curveball,” he warned.
A warning becomes reality on the frozen river
His predicted “curveball” was an absolute nightmare for Failor and the other 32 mushers two days into the race during the 85-mile run between the checkpoints of Manley Hot Springs and Tanana.
A “sand blizzard” of silt from sandbars on the frozen Tanana River reduced visibility to zero, flattened trail markers and had mushers and their dogs scrambling over glare ice.
The nightmare scenario unfolded even before the mushers got to the Yukon, racing along the tributary of the Yukon that feeds into the larger river at Tanana.
Mushing in the darkness, Failor was lost for nearly an hour on his run. He told his wife that his team got turned around in the sandstorm.
“We got blown way off to the left after overshooting the trail to the right. Very slippery glare ice with sand blowing everywhere,” he said.
Mushers told Iditarod.com Insider the section of the trail was amazingly difficult. Paige Drobny said she felt like she was on another planet. Gabe Dunham said it was like being on Mars. Anna Berington said her headlamp couldn’t find anything but the sand/silt.
Failor and his Alaskan Husky Adventures 17th-Dog Team finally arrived in Tanana on March 6 at 2:14 a.m. (AKST), a checkpoint 202 miles into the race.
‘I figured it’d be a good time to reset’
At the checkpoint, Failor didn’t like what he saw with several members of his 16-dog sled dog team. He decided a long rest was needed for a few of his dogs.
All mushers must take a 24-hour mandatory stop during the race at a checkpoint, though normally it would come later in the event.
Failor made the decision there was no time like the present.
Mushers also have to take a pair of mandatory eight-hour rest breaks along the trail, but rules prohibit doing it until mushers are further along.
“So just coupled with the fact that you can’t take an eight, and it was a perfect time of day, I’ll be leaving at 2 a.m., and maybe the whole team can bounce back,” Failor said after opting to take his 24-hour break far sooner than he had planned.
“So I know it’s early to take my 24, but I just thought that you’ve got to take it at some point, and if the team … if some of the dogs need it and I don’t want to drop them yet … then take it now,” Failor said.
He said several of his dogs were stiff and sore when the team pulled into Tanana, likely from battling what he called a “slippery, windy and sandy” environment during the 85-mile trip from Manley Hot Springs.
“Some of the sore muscles might have developed from that. They didn’t show me anything while running, but when I got in here, I found the stiffness.”
It was a popular location with 14 of the 33 teams stopped there at one point after being battered on the river.
Failor said he consulted with veterinarians at the checkpoint.
“The relationship between the musher and the vet team works really well. I asked for their opinions, helping them show me how to stretch (the dogs) … massage them … all that kind of stuff … just bouncing ideas off of their experience.
“I have enough experience now to know whether or not the dog will probably make it down the trail. But from here to Ruby is two or three runs. And if it’s a horrible trail like it could be, you don’t want to (carry) a dog with a full sled,” he said.
“There’s a lot of massaging, a lot of stretching, make sure they get a lot of hydration. If it was just another (40-mile run) run down the river, I wouldn’t have taken a 24 here, but since it was three runs or two runs, I figured it’d be a good time to reset,” Failor said.
Racing from the back of the pack — with the help of an old friend
By the time Failor left Tanana, he was racing at the back of the pack in 31st place, ahead of only veteran Jeff Deeter and rookie Charmayne Morrison, both of whom later scratched from the event.
Morrison ended her race at Tanana on March 5 and Deeter scratched March 7 when his team got to Galena.
For a veteran who had a goal of a Top-10 finish when the Iditarod began, Failor knew he and his huskies had work to do. He likely heard the words of an old friend, Iditarod finisher and race judge Jim Davis, whose ashes he carried to scatter along the trail this year.
Davis died in 2024 from a cardiac event at the age of 75.
Failor said Davis, working as a race judge, helped him at a checkpoint during a previous Iditarod.
“I had mishandled my pocket knife and had stabbed by right thigh above my knee,” he said before the race.
“Jim was the race judge there and he gave really sound (knife-handling) advice. I thought I was going to be withdrawn from the race. He said, ‘No, I am not going to withdraw you. That’s your choice. You can continue on if you want to.’
“It’s always nice to have a friend on the trail, especially when you’re in low moments. Jim has definitely been that for me during the Iditarod,” Failor said.
“It was nice that he was there, that he was my friend. I trusted him,” he said.
That advice must have echoed inside his head at Tanana.
“I finished that year because of him … or one of the reasons why … I just went checkpoint to checkpoint. He just said. ‘Take it easy, go one run at a time. You don’t need to just end your race right now,’” Failor said during an interview with Iditarod.com Insider during the stop in Tanana.
“Us mushers, we don’t have too many friends that we hang out with on a regular basis, because we’re always hanging out with our dogs.
“But when I did hang out with Jim, he always gave sound advice. Just a calming sense, very even-keeled. I always just think of a real calm ship out on the sea, not faltering back and forth.”
Climbing through the field — and a harsh Yukon loop
Failor and his veteran dogs quickly began to find their rhythm after leaving just one dog behind at Tanana.
He covered the 117-mile run between Tanana and Ruby in just under 24 hours, dropping off two of his dogs at the latter checkpoint, leaving him with 13 in harness. That run was the longest between checkpoints on the 2025 Iditarod trail.
After a five-hour plus rest in Ruby, Failor then raced 50 miles to Galena in 5 hours, 44 minutes, averaging 8.72 miles an hour, passing four teams along the way and pulling into the checkpoint in 23rd place.
Failor left Galena and covered the 51 miles to Nulato (420 miles into the race) in six hours, averaging 8.5 miles per hour. He passed four more teams along the way and arrived in 19th place on March 8 at 1:21 a.m. (AKDT) with still 13 dogs in harness.
Failor mushed away from the Nulato checkpoint March 8 at 8:22 a.m. (AKST) in 15th place.
He raced 36 miles to Kaltag and when he left that checkpoint to begin the looping route to the south, he was in 13th place.
One run at a time, just as Davis once counseled him — even as a grueling 329-mile out-and-back, looping trail began from Kaltag to Shageluk and back again, nearly every mile on the frozen Yukon River.
Failor left the Eagle Island checkpoint March 9 at 7:56 a.m. (AKDT) (526 miles into the race) in 12th place when veteran musher Gabe Dunham — a resident of Willow, Alaska, like Failor — made the decision to scratch from the race at that spot at 8:03 a.m.
Iditarod.com Insider commentator Bruce Lee, an Iditarod finisher who has been involved in the race for more than two decades, said running hundreds of miles on the river makes the race seem longer than usual.
Lee said a traditional route, either north or south, is broken into ecosystems and cultural changes. The river is flat and doesn’t offer the elevation changes found on the traditional routes.
Making it tougher still is the trail from Kaltag to Shageluk and back was difficult to navigate.
At Eagle Island, Drobny, who was mushing in third place, said the trail from Kaltag to Eagle Island was easily one of the 10 worst trails she’s ever traveled, according to Iditarod.com Insider.
The section was slushy with overflow when the trail breakers went through on snow machines. They churned up the trail and then it froze into an icy rough runway. Then Mother Nature added her special touch with heavy snow and winds creating drifting and whiteout conditions, making for a very slow trail, Iditarod.com Insider reported.
The loop did lead to the first 2025 musher-to-musher encounter on the Yukon near Grayling when Failor and his southbound team came across northbound musher Jesse Holmes, who was on his way to win the event.
As the teams approached, Failor slid his team to the right to give Holmes room to pass. Both teams slowed, but did not stop, leading to a failed attempt at a “high five” between the two veteran sled dog racers — Failor in his 14th run and Holmes in his eighth.
After the pass, the two mushers waved and continued on their respective races.
After the successful pass, during which neither veteran group of huskies paid much attention to one another, Holmes continued north back to Eagle Island and Failor south to the Grayling checkpoint.
After that encounter, it was just a slog for the next few days as Failor traveled from Grayling to Anvik and Shageluk before turning north and retracing his dog’s tracks all the way back to Kaltag, then 785 miles into the race.
He celebrated his 43rd birthday on the Iditarod trail, which he has done since first doing the race since 2012.
Peace on Earth, pizza style
After finally heading west, Failor — still running 12th — encountered familiar checkpoints and reunited with old friends.
In fact, he reached Peace on Earth Thursday morning — at least the pizza version.
Failor 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 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.
(Above is a video produced in 2024 by Iditarod.Com Insider about the pizza deliveries through Peace on Earth restaurant in Unalakleet.)
A year ago, restaurant owners said Failor had more pizzas ordered for him than any other musher.
“(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,” co-owner Davida Hanson said.
“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.
From Unalakleet, Failor visited “old friends” in Shaktoolik (mile 908), Koyuk (958), Elim (1,008), White Mountain (1,057) and Safety (1,106) before cruising down into Nome.
After taking his eight-hour mandatory rest at White Mountain, Failor moved into 11th place, departing ahead of veteran musher Nicolas Petit, with seven dogs in harness, again wearing the No. 31 bib he had left behind at the first checkpoint in Nanana.
Petit, who had left the checkpoint and then returned for runner-related issues, exited again shortly after Failor and the two of them them then raced to Nome just a few miles apart during most of the 71-mile chase to the finish line
Our exclusive local coverage of Matthew Failor in the 2025 Iditarod was 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.
