Eddie Burke Jr wins the 2026 Knik 200

In a race that started off fast and is finishing just as quickly, Eddie Burke Jr. took a commanding lead from the get go and didn't look back. The man who used to "put money down" on races is now one puts money down on while racing. 

Burke won the race in 2023, running a team from his mentor Aaron Burmeister. The team was the one Burke worked with to learn how to mush and would run his rookie Iditarod with. Eddie would completely catch the bug as success came and he branched off on his own with his own kennel. He would run the Knik the next year with his own team before taking time off in 2025 to rebuild his team and be a "new dad" for the second time. 

Before this year's Knik race the musher took to his socials announcing that his team was pretty young and named several yearlings to his team. There was talk that he would go a bit slower because of their age, most onlookers expecting him to maybe take it easy. However, the trail was hard and fast and ones Eddie and team have been running on as of late. His team looked good - so he let them compete.

And compete they did.

Eddie took off down the trail and dominated most of Saturday. It shocked very few when he was first into the finish.

The Knik whizzed by this weekend with what seems like all teams off the trail (the trackers are glitchy and show mileage number instead of FIN). The award banquet is happening now so official standings and awards won will be announced later Sunday.

2026 Knik 200 race preview

After a rough beginning to the season in South Central causing races to be canceled or postponed, the Knik 200 is able to run its rescheduled race. The traditional season opener had to push the start back several weeks to try and get some snow on the ground so that trails could be put in. After a deep freeze and finally a dumping (or two) of snow, the race is a GO for Saturday.

One of the big problems with postponing a race is that everyone's schedules get discombobulated. There's an almost unspoken rule of sorts between the races that keeps one major race per weekend in the winter. Unfortunately for the Knik (or any race) to postpone meant that they would have to either take from other races or lose teams to other races depending on how each kennel planned their season.

The Knik went from a full roster with a waitlist to now just fifteen teams are listed on the roster. Not a huge deal all things considered with competing with the very popular Kusko 300 set to take off Friday night, and the Two Rivers 100/200. This may be a good chance for newer kennels and b teams to really have a fantastic placement. It's always good to see the "new guys" do well.

The race has gotten lucky weather wise as this appears to be one of the weekends that the area will have normal winter temps for the teams. With highs in the upper teens and the lows forecasted to be just above 0. Perfect temps for the dogs, and for the bundled up spectators. There's no snow forecasted until possibly Monday, which most if not all teams should be finished will before the snow starts (unless it comes early, which hasn't really been the case this year).

With the small roster, it's anyone's game for the top placings, but there are still some well known names in the mix who are probably thought of at the favorites. We'll take a look at who might be the one's to watch, but really they're ALL worth paying attention to!

**Note Fantasy Mushing is only planning to run an Iditarod game this year, no other races, so no need to run over and create a team.**

Who to watch

Brenda Mackey - Let's not pick her just because of her name. While she does come from Champion bloodlines (as do the dogs) Brenda's no slouch when it comes to mushing dogs. While it's a good guess that Knik is being used to train up and evaluate her team ahead of the Iditarod, if things are going well it wouldn't be surprising to see Brenda let the team cut loose and burn up the trail in front of them.

Eddie Burke Jr - Eddie shared his team line up earlier this week and it looks like he's using this more as a training run for a lot of his younger team with this being their first race. Don't be surprised if he doesn't run a super competitive race, but there's something about Eddie that makes you not want to count him out ever.

Dave Turner - Dave's one of those mushers that if he's in the race, there's a good chance he'll be one of the ones to watch. After running in the Copper Basin the Knik should feel like a vacation (temp wise, anyway).

Hunter Keefe - Hunter's back! After having his season last year derail due to a broken leg in the Kusko last year, Keefe is back! It's unsure what Hunter's hoping to do here on the Knik, but he's a fan favorite and is always one of the fun ones to watch.

Robert Redington - It would feel wrong to not have at least one Redington listed as one to watch in the race dedicated to Robert's grandfather, right? It's also another return of sorts for Robert as he's been away from racing for a couple of years (though we did see him at the ceremonial start of the Iditarod this past year running a team to carry an Iditarider after a last minute WD by another musher).

AddieAnn Randall, Isaac Redington, and Talia Martens could all play spoilers with Randall and Redington most likely vying for top junior musher of the Knik. With Emily Robinson aged out of Junior mushing (and running the Kusko this weekend) it's wide open for juniors as to who will be the next top team.

Make sure to check out the full roster so you can cheer for everyone (go like/follow their socials while you're at it).

How to watch

For those of us who cannot watch in person, there will be a lot of refreshing of internet pages, here's a run down on how you can follow along with this weekend's race. (And good luck to us all with how many races there are to keep track of!)

Official Website
The race had to restructure their organization a couple of years ago and is now under the direction of the Knik Iditarod Trail Blazers, so they have just a page on their site for the race, but it has the rules and basic information. They also have a way to follow the times in and out LIVE via a spreadsheet.

GPS Tracker
What would we do without these little trackers that drive us crazy when they go haywire (I will always blame the aliens), and there's hope of trackers at this race, but at publishing time it has not been confirmed. Trackleaders is once again providing all armchair mushers a way to follow the race, you can catch all the tracker action here.

Social Media
The race is most active on Facebook. The race has not been active on Twitter in years. 

For live feeds it may be best to follow the official race page and hope for some feeds there. Kale Casey was supposed to cover the Copper Basin this year but had something come up that made him miss out. There's been no posts by race or Kale to say if he would be in Knik this weekend. If he does end up attending the Knik 200, he'll go live on Facebook!

Julia Redington is a photographer who is often at the race.

Schedule of Events

Friday, January 23, 2026
4:00pm-6:00pm Musher's Dinner and Bib Draw

Saturday, January 24, 2026
8:00am Mandatory Vet Check
11:00am Start

Sunday, January 25, 2026
6:00pm Award Banquet

What are your thoughts on this year's Knik 200? Who do you see taking the big prize? Who are you cheering for? Comment below!

And, as always, you can Buy me a slice of pizza to help keep the blog up and running. It's always appreciated but never expected.  

2026 Knik 200 musher roster

After a dismal December where all South Central saw was rain and ice, the Knik 200 had to postpone its traditional date of the first weekend in January hoping that by the end of January the weather would have changed. And change it did. First there were weeks of flipping cold, record breaking low temps that had many wondering if they hadn't been transported to the Fairbanks area. Then the snow. Oh, the glorious snow.

That snow was threatened somewhat with a brief warm up with, yes, more rain, but snow returned just days later. And, so, we have the Knik 200 ready to go this weekend. Unfortunately the postponement had the Knik 200 competing for teams with the Kusko 300 and the Two Rivers 100/200 races. A robust roster went down to sixteen names according to the race's facebook page as of January 21. 

There are a couple of junior mushers as well as several first time racers on the new roster. Some fan favorites as well. All in all a diverse group of dog teams getting ready to head down the trails of Knik on Saturday. So let's get to what you came for, shall we?

**Note the Fantasy Mushing will not have a Knik 200 tab this year, just an Iditarod one.**

As always, the roster will be updated with bib numbers and start order after the bib draw on Friday.

Joe Redington Sr. is honorary bib #1.

Bib	Musher	Kennel	Link	Link	Link
2	Brenda Mackey	Mackey's Alaskan Distance Dogs	Website	Facebook	Instagram
3	Kevin Hansen	Hansen Kennel		Facebook	Instagram
4	Isaac Redington	Redington Racing		Facebook
5	Eddie Burke Jr.	Off the Rails Racing	Website	Facebook	Instagram
6	Sydnie Bahl	Dream a Dream Kennel	Website	Facebook
7	Baydon Ketts	Redington Racing?		Facebook	Instagram
8	AddieAnn Randall	Rock On Racing	Website	Facebook	Instagram
9	Josh Schlosser	Sled Dog Systems	Website	Facebook	Instagram
10	Robert Redington	Dogsled Alaska	Website	Facebook	Instagram
11	Talia Martens	49th State Sled Dogs	Website	Facebook	Instagram
12	William Baker	49th State Sled Dogs	Website	Facebook
13	Addy Pederson	Windchill Kennel		Facebook	Instagram
14	Dave Turner	Racing Chaos		Facebook	Instagram
15	Hunter Keefe	Redington Mush Alaska	Website	Facebook	Instagram
16	Austin Moore	444 Sled Dogs	Website	Facebook	Instagram
17	Marina McGourty	East Wind Mushing	Website	Facebook	Instagram

*Roster as of January 23 @ 8:00pm AKST.

Who do you think will take the whole thing? Who are you excited to cheer for? Comment below with your thoughts, cheers, tears, etc!

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2026 Knik 200 postponed due to trail conditions

It's deja vu for the South Central Alaska mushing community. There's very little snow in the MatSu Valley to start the race season. While the snow came on time this past October, November saw nothing but rain and ice. December temps dropped to well below the average for this time of year, and with those temps came hurricane force winds. Each weekend another windstorm blowing what little snow Knik and Wasilla still had completely away.

Teams once again have to travel away from their home trails in search of snow. Most are finding trails in and around Denali and Fairbanks, but with their feet of snow has also come extreme cold temperatures (that even prompted the Alaska State Troopers to warn residents to stay indoors until things warm up - mushers didn't listen). 

The Knik 100 was canceled due to weather as well as just not having any trails. Mushers were understanding and even thankful the race didn't try to make it work, but worry soon grew that the Knik 200 would soon suffer the same fate. There were rumors that the race would move to where there was snow for trails, but the board announced that they would decide and let mushers know on December 29.

So Alaska waited and hoped the wind would blow in some snow clouds. It didn't.

Well, there was that one day that had snow for about two hours, but it all blew away as fast as it fell.

And now, the Knik 200 board has announced that the race is not canceled, but postponed to the end of January. "We know that not all of you will be able to join that date," the board wrote in a simple facebook post Monday, "but hope that some of you still can!" With the new dates of January 24-25, the race will run at the same time of the very popular Kuskokwim 300 in Bethel. Several teams are signed up for both races, and it will be interesting to see what race they stay entered in. 

Many things will come into play as the deciding factor of where teams end up - mainly training hours. If South Central does not see snow soon mushers will be forced to spend a lot of time and money on the road traveling to trails that are runnable. That could force some to back out of the Kusko and stick with the Knik. Teams have until January 17 to drop out of the Knik 200 to receive their full refund.

Fast trail sees junior mushers take the lead

Twenty-eight teams took off down the trail Saturday morning on the first leg of the Knik 100. By Saturday afternoon the leaders charged back to the starting line finishing their first fifty miles of the stage race. 

Just over a minute and a half separate the top two teams. Junior mushers Isaac Redington and Emily Robinson will battle it out for the win Sunday, but it's far from their race to lose. The top five teams are close together with about thirty seconds to a minute separating each team. Mushers reported a hard and fast trail for Saturday's start with a packed trail with just a small dusting of snow (making the start a slippery one for handlers).

Isaac Redington will be the first team out at 10am Sunday. The junior musher has a 1min37sec lead over reigning Knik 100 champion Emily Robinson. Robinson, of course, is the junior musher everyone has eyes on as her legend has only grown since she hit the trails several years ago. Last year Robinson played with "the big dogs" and has even bigger racing plans this season. Both junior mushers have a long history with the sport with families that have helped grow their knowledge in the sport. Redington, of course, is a fourth generation musher in his family. Redington's team flew out of the start Saturday morning with the junior musher looking very much in control of the team. Likewise, Robinson looked like a seasoned professional dog musher.

While the juniors were battling for first, "old men" Eddie Burke Jr. and Riley Dyche were close behind coming in third and fourth respectively. Burke is just thirty seconds behind Robinson, with Dyche 1min1sec behind him. Ryan Redington rounds out the top five sitting 1min34 seconds behind Dyche.

Unless weather predictions are completely off, the trail should be much the same Sunday. Teams will leave in the order of their first day placement begining at 10am on Knik Lake. Buckle up, fans, the kick off to the season promises to have a very dramatic finish.

To view a full list of results click here.

Kale Casey will try to go live Sunday on his Facebook page.