ANCHORAGE, Alaska, March 14 (Reuters) - A Norwegian musher won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race early on Wednesday, notching the third victory ever for his home country in the 46-year history of the annual 1,000-mile (1609-km) trek across Alaska's wilderness. Ulsom held a commanding lead in the world's most famous sled dog race, and after a mandatory eight-hour rest, he was hours from the finish line in Nome. After nearly 1,000 miles from north of Anchorage, Ulsom and the eight dogs on his team came off the Bering Sea ice onto Nome’s main street to cross the finish line at 3am local time. This part of the trail is known for ground blizzards and monotonous stretches of nothing but white ice where teams have stalled in past races

While the French-born Petit, 38, was backtracking to regain the trail, Leifseth Ulsom unknowingly took the lead. Robert Sorlie of Hurdal won the race in 2003 and 2005, and Leifseth Ulsom credits Sorlie for inspiring him as a youth. In 2011, he moved to Alaska to begin training full-time with his small kennel of dogs – many brought directly from Norway to Alaska – and joined with Russian teammates as part of Team Racing Beringia. Leifseth Ulsom ran his first Iditarod in 2013, decisively claiming rookie of the year honors by not only being the fastest rookie that year but also the fastest rookie to have ever run Iditarod with a seventh-place finish. Ulsom picks up about 50,000 US dollars, a drop from the 2017 winner’s earnings of more than 71,000 US dollars. The race, which began on March 4, has been suffering financially and lost the Wells Fargo bank as a major sponsor over the last year. Race officials announced that the team of four-time champion Dallas Seavey tested positive for the opioid painkiller tramadol after his second-place finish last March but said they could not prove he gave the drug to his dogs.
Norwegian musher Joar Leifseth Ulsom wins the 2018 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.