If ever there was an Iditarod musher who was born to run, it’s Dallas Seavey.

He’s the son of three-time champion Mitch Seavey and the grandson of race pioneer Dan Seavey, who competed in the inaugural Iditarod in 1973.

Seavey has more than lived up to his bloodline to become the winningest musher in the history of the 1,000-mile sled-dog race.

In 2024, at age 37, he won a record-setting sixth Iditarod title, adding to victories in 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2021.

Six wins seemed an impossible task for most of the race’s first half-century. Two Rivers legend Rick Swenson recorded his fifth victory in 1991, and while a number of mushers have won the Iditarod four times, it wasn’t until 30 years after Swenson’s record run that Seavey matched the mark with his fifth win.

By then, Seavey had already crafted several re-writes to the Iditarod record book.

In 2005, at age 18, he became the youngest musher to run the Iditarod. In 2012, at age 25, he became the youngest musher to win the race, and in 2014, he became the fastest to win it. In 2016 he broke his own speed record (only to lose the record to his dad the next year).

“The first Iditarod that I won was a super-special one,” Seavey said in Nome after capturing No. 6. “When we got the second one, it proved it’s not a fluke. We’re supposed to be here.”

Seavey, whose kennel is in Talkeetna, is athletic, analytical and innovative. And he is consistent: In his first 14 races, he posted a dozen top-10 finishes, and in a nine-race stretch from 2012-2024, he racked up six wins, two runner-up finishes and one fourth-place finish.

Seavey isn’t just born to run. He’s wired to win.

— Beth Bragg