Jessie Holmes Wins Back-to-Back Iditarod Titles, Credits Dogs After Nome Finish

Jessie Holmes guided his 12-dog team down a police-escorted Front Street to the Burled Arch finish line in Nome on Tuesday night, completing the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in 9 days, 7 hours, 32 minutes, 51 seconds to claim back-to-back titles at 44 years old. The crowd cheering him in was celebrating two things at once: a rare repeat championship and St. Patrick's Day, with the temperature dipped below zero.

"Dogs first, man, dogs first," Holmes said in the finish chute. "They deserve all the glory."

He meant it literally. After completing his paperwork and giving a brief interview on the public address system, Holmes fed his entire team large ribeye steaks.

The finish came at approximately 9:32 p.m. local time on March 17, more than a full day faster than his 2025 win, which was run on a 1,130-mile reroute out of Fairbanks due to lack of snow, the longest course in Iditarod history. This year's race took the normal 1,000-mile northern route out of Willow, where the official start was held March 8, a day after the ceremonial start in Anchorage. The course crossed two mountain ranges, ran along the frozen Yukon River, and tracked across the unpredictable Bering Sea ice before reaching Nome.

His lead dogs were the story within the story. Zeus, now 3, was a 2-year-old making his Iditarod debut in 2025 and led only a couple of runs that year. This time, Holmes said, Zeus led every run except one. Polar, the 8-year-old veteran, was held back through most of the race to conserve energy, then put up front after the final checkpoint before Nome.

"Man, when I put Polar up there he puffed his chest out, he got his strut on and he said, 'Let's go!' It was amazing," Holmes said.

The repeat puts Holmes in historically thin company. He is only the third musher in the 54-year history of the race to win back-to-back titles immediately after a first championship, joining Susan Butcher, who did it in 1986-87, and Lance Mackey, who did it in 2007-08. Both of those mushers went on to win four titles. KNOM, citing a different metric, noted Holmes is the first repeat champion the Iditarod has seen in a decade and the sixth musher to win consecutively since the race began in 1973, and the only one to do it on two different courses.

"I've been chasing greatness ever since the last time I was here," Holmes said. "So we're just going to keep chasing those footsteps, trying to push ourselves every day to be better."

Holmes, a former cast member on the National Geographic reality show "Life Below Zero," made his Iditarod debut in 2018 and finished seventh. He has entered and completed every race since, placing in the top 10 seven times and finishing in the top five in each of the last five races. His Team Can't Stop earned approximately $80,000 for the 2026 win, compared to slightly more than $57,000 for his 2025 victory.

He is already looking ahead: next year, Holmes said, he plans to chase a third title and take a run at the record for the southern route.

"It's a blessing to be out here," Holmes said after finishing. "I was just so full of gratitude and gratefulness being welcomed into all these communities, and being out in all this beautiful country with the most amazing dog team I've ever seen.