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CELEBRATING A GREAT RUN – Yukon Quest 300 winner Jessie Holmes, left, greets past champion Aliy Zirkle at the race finish line in Central, Alaska, yesterday. Photo courtesy of BECKY ALEXANDER

Holmes edges Zirkle to win Yukon Quest 300

Nenana, Alaska’s Jessie Holmes won the Yukon Quest 300 yesterday, holding off a charge from Aliy Zirkle of Two Rivers.

By Whitehorse Star on February 9, 2016

Nenana, Alaska’s Jessie Holmes won the Yukon Quest 300 yesterday, holding off a charge from Aliy Zirkle of Two Rivers.

Holmes crossed the finish line in Central at 3:43 p.m., about an hour ahead of Zirkle, who finished at 4:39 p.m. Zirkle won the race in 2014.

Holmes, who led for most of the race, capped off a commanding inaugural performance with an official time of 2:00:58.

Holmes said it was a “mind blowing” experience to take the win, and pointed to his decision to quicken his pace and take the lead after Two Rivers as the strategic key to his victory.

Asked what the highlight of the race was for him, the 33-year-old said getting to ascend Eagle Summit with defending 1,000-mile race champion Brent Sass was the thrill of a lifetime.

Holmes, a rookie in this year’s race, has been running dogs for 10 years and wrote in his race bio that he was using this year’s Quest 300 to test his team for the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest next year.

He finished second in the Old Mail Trail 200 last year and has also finished the Kuskokwim 300 and the Yukon Flats 300.

Mushers in this year’s race found themselves doing several head-on passes on the race’s final, 73-mile leg because the course had been changed due to jumble ice on the Yukon River.

The original route called for mushers to depart Circle and complete a lengthy loop out on the Yukon. Instead, teams were sent back down the winding Birch Creek to finish in the Steese Highway community of Central, the checkpoint prior to Circle.

Five mushers of the 23 who started the race were out of the running on Monday.

Patrick Mackey of Kasilof and his father, Jason Mackey of Wasilla, both scratched Monday in Central, and Giordano Tarara of Italy and Fabian Schmitz of Fox Lake, Yukon, scratched Sunday at the Mile 101 checkpoint.

Race officials disqualified musher Meredith Mapes of Palmer late Sunday after her team faltered about 10 miles before reaching the Mile 101 checkpoint.

Race judge Zack Steer said Mapes’ team was not performing well after making it up Rosebud Summit and that the 22-year-old musher had camped on the side of the trail.

Members of the Quest trail crew were watching the GPS tracker and saw Mapes not moving for three or four hours.

“She had stalled out, and we went to check on her,” Steer said. “It was her decision to take assistance from the trail breakers.”

Asking for assistance triggered the disqualification, Steer said. To scratch, a musher must be in a checkpoint, he said.

The crew led Mapes’ team on an access trail about two miles to the Steese Highway, where her dog handlers met them with a truck. Most of the trip was accomplished by leading the dogs, but a snowmachine was hooked up to the leaders at one point, Steer said.

“Of course she was disappointed, like any musher would be,” Steer said, adding that the experience of making it that far into the race would make Mapes better prepared for future races.

– Report courtesy of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

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