Farragut native Riley Dyche crossed the finish line seventh in the grueling Iditarod on Wednesday, completing the thousand-mile Alaskan trek from Anchorage to Nome in a little over ten days.
The 33-year-old Dyche has lived in Alaska since 2012 and runs the Dark Horse Racing Kennel, with nearly 40 dogs.
While he and his father were always avid outdoorsmen, Dyche says an opportunity during his late teens got him hooked on mushing.
“My first semester of college in Leadville, Colorado, I needed a job and heard about a place outside of town that gave mushing tours and that sounded really cool to me,” Dyche says. “I had always liked dogs a lot and it sounded fun so I went and interviewed and ended up working there — and I was pretty much hooked right away.”
He’s competed in the endurance race multiple times, including a top-10 finish in last year’s Iditarod. In a 2022 interview with K-M-A, Dyche says the mushers and the dogs experience sub-zero temperatures and strong winds of 40 or more miles an hour during the multi-day adventure.
“It’s kind of like climbing (Mount) Everest, there’s people who are climbing it to just get to the top, and there’s people who are trying to do it for speed records, and it’s the same thing for the Iditarod,” said Dyche. “Over half the field is running it to run it or finish it, and then there’s 20 to 30 that are running it to race it. There’s a big difference in running to finish and running to race.”
He says it’s often a huge accomplishment to even cross the finish line in Nome. This year, he ended the race with 12 of the original 16 dogs that started the race in Anchorage.
(By Ethan Hewett, KMA, Shenandoah)