Iditarod champion should finish tonight

Jessie Holmes at the Ceremonial Start of Iditarod 54.
March 7, 2026. Anchorage, Alaska.

Jessie Holmes and his team of twelve dogs rolled into White Mountain at 3:10am AKDST Tuesday for their final 8 hour mandatory break. As stated in previous posts, Jessie Holmes and his team of dogs have dominated the race almost from the get go. The musher felt the pressure to defend his title and made that the only real goal for this season. Should he succeed, he will only be the third musher in race history to defend his title after winning his first one (other mushers have won more, but not consecutively after their first win). He will join his name with legends Susan Butcher and Lance Mackey if all things go according to plan today.

With Jessie coming in at 3:10am he will be able to leave as soon as 11:10am. The team has a four hour cushion (give or take a few minutes) on the next team (and currently only other team) in White Mountain. Travis Beals and his team of eleven came into White Mountain at 7:07am AKDST. The musher ran a solid race and managed his team well to have the ability to pick off quite a few teams that ran the race ahead of him. Beals mentioned to Insider that he felt that his team should be the champion team and that he was just running out of miles to catch Holmes. That seems to be the case with the nearly four hour lead Holmes has. Still, as we learned in 2014, solid leads mean nothing if Mother Nature wants to have her say. Beals will be able to leave White Mountain at 3:07pm AKDST.

The chase pack of positions third through fifth is where the real race is. Not knocking the top two, it's just that there is no clear cut winner for those placements between the trio of Jeff Deeter, Wade Marrs, and Paige Drobny. Drobny, of course, spent much of this race playing cat and mouse with Jessie Holmes sticking with him until the Kaltag Portage where Holmes managed to surge ahead from his already 1.5-2hour lead over the Squids. Marrs, much like Beals, sat back away from the leaders on his run to the coast choosing to bank rest so that his team would be ready to push on the coast. And, in somewhat of a surprise to fans Monday, Jeff Deeter made a huge move on the coast and finds himself in prime position to match or exceed his last finishing placement (4th in 2024 - Deeter did not finish in 2025.)

In a year where many fan favorite mushers spoke to Insider hinting that they were winding down their Iditarod racing careers (Michelle Phillips saying this is her last one as a musher but hopes to be a race judge in the future, Jessie Royer hinting she doesn't have many Iditarods left, and even Jason Mackey hedging on how long he'll keep running the race), the top five give hope that the next generation of Iditarod is in very capable hands. (Honestly, the current top 10 all should stick around a while. - excluding Phillips.)

The back of the pack saw a flip flop over night. When last we spoke Grayson Bruton was the race's red lantern winner, but how that is back to being Jody Potts-Joseph who has a worrisome long campout going on near Old Woman's(?) Cabin. With the champion finish closing in, the back of the pack may need to pick up their pace a smidge - though with Dan Carter being first time race marshall we have yet to know how he will handle that rule of being "non-competitive" at this point. Unalakleet is a major hub and an easy spot to move teams off the trail, so it's the "best bet" for where teams will be WD in this portion of the race. No guarantee that is what will happen here, however.

With Jessie Holmes being able to leave at 11:10am AKDST today, and a 70-77mile jaunt left for his team (mileage depends on who you talk to) there's still plenty of room for a race to go sideways. Most top teams make the run from White Mountain to Nome between ten and eleven hours so start looking for Holmes to finish between 9pm and 10pm AKDST Tuesday night (but watch those trackers sometimes team surprise us with a burst of speed and others surprise us by being blown off course - looking again at you, 2014!).

How do you think those last 70+ miles will shake out for the champ? What races within a race are you excited for? Comment with your thoughts below!