Musher Brent Sass wins his first Iditarod race across Alaska

Musher Brent Sass won the arduous Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race across Alaska on Tuesday as his team of 11 dogs dashed off the Bering Sea ice through a crowd of fans in downtown Nome.

Sass mushed down Front Street and across the finish line just before 6 a.m.

"It's awesome, it's a dream come true," Sass said before he was presented the prize-winning check of $50,000, his beard and mustache partially encased in ice during the post-race interview. 

"When I started mushing, my goal was to win the Yukon Quest and win the Iditarod. Checked them both off the list now," he said. 

Sass said he was "super, super, super proud" of his dog team. "It's all on them. They did an excellent job the whole race. I asked a lot of them, and they preformed perfectly," he said. 

"Every one of these dogs I've raised since puppies, and we've been working towards this goal the whole time, and we're here," he said, his voice cracking. "It's crazy."

Fans lined the street welcoming the popular musher, who was escorted by police for the final few blocks to the famous burled arch that marked his victory.

It's the first Iditarod win for Sass, a wilderness guide and kennel owner who was running in his seventh Iditarod. His previous best finish was third last year.

Sass took command of this year's race early on and never was challenged, but the final stretch of the race might have been the toughest, with extreme winds blowing on the Bering Sea ice leading into Nome. 

"I had to make it very interesting at the end," Sass said.

At one point during the last few miles of the race, he took a tumble, and the sled went off the trail. He thought he was going to have to hunker down, stopping with his dogs to wait until the weather improved.

"I couldn't see anything," he said. "The dogs, the only reason we got out of there is because they trusted me to get them back to the trail. And once we got back to the trail, they just took off a hundred miles an hour again, and we were able to stay on the trail and get in here. It was a lot of work," he said.

The 42-year-old native of Minnesota who moved north in 1998 to ski for the University of Alaska Fairbanks had about a 90 minute lead over the defending champion, Dallas Seavey, early Tuesday as he left the last checkpoint in Safety, which is 35 kilometres from Nome.

Seavey is tied with musher Rick Swenson for the most Iditarod wins ever at 5. Seavey earlier told The Associated Press he was planning to take some time off after the race to spend with his daughter whether he won or lost it.