Two dogs have died during Alaska’s annual 1,000-mile dog sled competition – prompting fresh calls for the race to be banned.
The Iditarod is held every March and features dog sled drivers – known as mushers – and their canine teams travel across mountain ranges, a frozen river and sea ice, often in treacherous weather conditions.
The race starts on the first Saturday of the month and takes around 10 days to travel the route from Anchorage to Nome.
This year a two-year-old male called Bog collapsed just 200 feet (61 metres) from one of the race’s checkpoints and later died despite receiving CPR from a vet.
A second dog, George, four, collapsed around 629 miles into the contest and also died despite attempts to revive him.
The dogs were part of separate teams. Their mushers, Issac Teaford and Hunter Keefe, both voluntarily withdrew from the race.
Their deaths have prompted animal welfare organisation PETA to call for the event, which is the world’s longest sled dog race, to be banned.
Its senior vice president Colleen O’Brien said: “The death count keeps climbing for dogs who are forced to run until their bodies break down, all so the human winner can get a trophy while the dogs get an icy grave.
“PETA is calling for this despicable race to end.”
The campaign group claims more than 150 dogs have died in the Iditarod since it was first held in 1973.
Official data on the number of canine casualties has never been released.
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The last dog to die during the competition was a five-year-old female called Oshi back in 2019. After the race, vets found signs of pneumonia.
In the lead-up to this year’s event, five dogs died and eight were injured after teams were accidentally hit with snowmobiles during training runs.
Since the beginning of this year race five out of the 38 starting mushers have left the competition.
