Jessie Holmes, a former reality television star, won the longest-ever Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Friday, celebrating with fist pumps to a cheering

The Interior Alaska musher won his first Iditarod on his eighth try, arriving in Nome with his dog team early Friday.

Former reality TV star Jessie Holmes won the 53rd Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Friday, March 14, ending a run that was as commanding as the race was long.

Thanks to a lack of snow, this year’s edition of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race needed a new route across the Alaska wilderness. The course change adds more than 100 mile.

NOME — Jessie Holmes, a 43-year-old Alabamian who came to Alaska more than 20 years ago, has earned his first win in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Holmes crossed under the burled arch in Nome just before 3 a.m. Friday with 10 dogs on the line, completing his journey in a preliminary time of 10 days, 14 hours, 55 minutes and 41 seconds.

Holmes had a three-hour lead over his closest competitor, Matt Hall, who said he had stopped trying to catch up.

After the 2020 race, it took a vintage plane to get Thomas Waerner and his 16 dogs back home to Norway from Alaska at the start of the pandemic.

Former reality TV star Jessie Holmes wins Iditarod after crossing the finish line in 10 days, 14 hours, 55 minutes and 41 seconds.

Former reality star Jessie Holmes, who appeared on Life Below Zero, is the winner of the longest-ever Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Holmes began the race on March 3, according to

Jessie Holmes, a former reality television star on “Life Below Zero,” won the longest-ever Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race early Friday morning, crossing under the burled arch in Nome, Alaska, around 2:55 a.m.

The Iditarod went Hollywood in its 53rd year, and it made for a competition all the more memorable. The Great American Dog Sled Race proved rather time-consuming, with a lack of snow forcing organizers to change the event's usual route.