Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in neutral. An Alaskan husky in the Iditarod will burn about 9,666 calories each day; on a body-weight basis this rate of caloric burn is 3.5 times that of a human Tour de France cyclist. Similarly the VO2 max (aerobic capacity) of a typical Iditarod dog is about 240 milligrams of oxygen per kilogram of body weight, which is about three times that of a human Olympic marathon runner. Animal protection activists say that the Iditarod is not a commemoration of the 1925 serum delivery, and that race was originally called the Iditarod Trail Seppala Memorial Race in honor of
Sled dog racing Dog Derby mushers were international celebrities to such degree that one photogenic female musher named Lydia Hutchinson was tapped by a producer to star in his movie. She may have been on her way to being a movie star when she died of pneumonia in 1930. The American Dog Derby popularized dogsled racing in the 1920s and other dogsled races were organized in towns and cities across North America and Northern Europe in its wake. The most famous long-distance race is the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Also known as the "Last Great Race on Earth", the Iditarod is roughly