French musher Nicolas Petit had a commanding lead heading into Sunday’s stage of the Iditarod, but epic blown leads happen even in the world of sled-dog racing.
Petit left the Unalakleet checkpoint with a 14-mile, five-hour lead over the next closest competitor. With 200 miles remaining in the race, Petit was in solid position to add to his lead.
Then, everything went wrong.
Iditarod followers noticed that the GPS tracking for Petit’s sled had stalled on the Bering Sea at speeds below 2 mph and then hovered right at 0 mph. The extended delay in the middle of the sea shrunk his lead until it was gone. He went from first by five hours to his current position of fourth place.
According to Petit, the mishap unfolded when two of his dogs on the 10-dog team started fighting about a bathroom break. When he yelled at the dogs to stop, the rest of the team simply refused to continue.
He said via ktuu.com:
According to Petit, his dogs flew out of Shaktoolik “like a rocket” but, when one of his dogs went to go to the bathroom, another dog “got a hold of him at one point, he jumped on him while he was on the ground.”
Petit then yelled at the older dog to leave the younger dog alone, and that’s when Petit said the other dogs changed.
“Everybody heard daddy yelling. Which doesn’t happen. And then they wouldn’t go anymore. Anywhere,” he said.
The dogs would eventually walk to the cabin after being forced to rest. Petit added that every dog on the team was healthy and doing fine, but the incident likely cost him the Iditarod title.
