Dick Wilmarth Dick Wilmarth Dick Wilmarth (c.1942 – March 21, 2018) was a miner and trapper from Red Devil, Alaska who won the inaugural Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in 1973 with lead dog "Hotfoot". In a 2001 interview with the Anchorage Daily News, Wilmarth said he saw the 1973 Iditarod as not really a sled dog race but more of a time to enjoy the Alaska wilderness with friends. He assembled a 12-dog team just a few months before the race, obtaining dogs from Native villages on the Kuskokwim River. Thirty-five dog teams started the 1973 race and twenty-two finished. Competing
Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race lead teams are often within a few hours of each other at this point. , the race has been decided by less than an hour seven different times, less than five minutes three times. The closest race in Iditarod history was in 1978 when the winner and the runner-up were only one second apart. The official finish line is the Red "Fox" Olson Trail Monument, more commonly known as the "burled arch", in Nome. The original burled arch lasted from 1975 until 2001, when it was destroyed by dry rot and years of inclement weather. The new arch is a