NOME — Blake Freking made history Friday as his dog team trotted under the burled arch in 51st place. With a time of 11 days, 21 hours and 40 seconds, Freking becomes the driver of the fastest-ever team of pure-bred Siberian huskies to run this race.
He and wife, Jennifer, ran the race together from the start, and the pair passed fellow Siberian dog driver Karen Ramstead in the last few runs along the Bering Sea coast. “We had some great run times, actually from Shaktoolik on,” he said.
While they were proud of the achievement, the couple was grateful simply to be at the finish line and the joy was tempered with grief over the loss of a dog earlier in the race. It was killed when a snowmobiler lost control at high speed and crashed into Jennifer Freking’s team.
While it was Jennifer who pulled in nine seconds ahead of her husband, she did not get credit for having the fastest all-Siberian squad in the Iditarod. Her team had a mix of dogs; five of her 10 dogs were Sibes, and the other five were Alaskan huskies — the standard racing huskies found in most teams.
Siberians are registered by the American Kennel Club as a distinct breed, like golden retrievers, beagles and chows. But the Alaskan husky is a different animal. Bred strictly for performance and not appearance, Alaskans are not deeply inbred so they come in all shapes and sizes. The Frekings dogs’ go back to lines developed by Earl and Natalie Norris.
The couple was all smiles at the finish line, but it’s been anything but an easy ride, especially for Jennifer, 27. She broke her pinkie finger on her left hand in a hard crash right at the start of the John Beargrease sled dog marathon on Jan. 27, and only had pins removed from her hand on the Friday before the race start. Then, as the couple was literally in the middle of this year’s run down the Yukon River, tragedy struck. They were stopped on the trail to snack their dogs, when a snowmobiler lost control as he tried to scoot by. His machine bounced off the side of the trail and careened into the middle of Jennifer’s team, killing one dog and injuring another.
“When it happened, I thought we were done,” she said. But the team of 11 dogs she had left all wanted to continue on. “As long as they were ready to go, I was ready to go,” she said. “I felt the accident had already taken a lot from me already, and I didn’t want it to take everything.”
This was Blake Freking’s second Iditarod. His first was in 2000. Jennifer was a rookie this year.
The Frekings also won the race for fastest Siberians in this year’s Iditarod. Karen Ramstead was on the trail from White Mountain, taking more time than usual, but there was no immediate word of trouble from race officials.