Butcher Credits ‘Powerful’ Dog Team for Her Victory

With her fourth victory in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race behind her, Susan Butcher already is anticipating No. 5, but a more immediate concern was ensuring that her dogs got proper credit.

“This team had power coming out of its ears,” she said Wednesday, minutes after winning the 1,158-mile Anchorage-to-Nome trek in record time. “Not so much charging up hills, but stamina. It just had it.”

Butcher finished at 10:53 a.m. Wednesday with 11 dogs. During her 11 days, 1 hour and 53 minutes on the trail, she had to drop three veteran dogs that pulled her to previous victories.

She wins $50,000 in first-place money plus $25,000 from Purina Pro Plan, one of her sponsors. Defending champion Joe Runyan finished No. 2, about 2 1/2 hours behind her.

Butcher said she wants an error-free race en route to an unprecedented fifth Iditarod win.

“I made so many mistakes,” she said. “I’d like to come into the Iditarod again and have a race like I had in 1986. I held that lead for a ways.”

The other woman besides Butcher to win the grueling race, Libby Riddles, watched Butcher’s finish on sunny streets in minus 10-degree weather.

“She outraced these guys. She maintained her dog team better,” Riddles said. “You make your luck.”

Since Riddles became the first woman to win in 1985, women have won the race five of the last six years, inspiring a T-shirt that reads, “Alaska: Where men are men and women win the Iditarod.”

Seven teams dropped out and one was disqualified. The remaining teams were strung out 600 miles back and were expected to straggle into Nome for a week or more.

Butcher, 33, said she soon may take some time away from racing.

“I’m going to go for a family,” she said. “I have to do that sooner rather than later. I want to get a fifth Iditarod win . . . (but) I want to retire from sled dog racing, the Iditarod, for a few years.”