Godard did beat him for first place in the Olympic Games exhibition race. He won New England Sled Dog Club races in Maine and New Hampshire he won Eastern International Dog Derby’s in Quebec he raced in Lake Placid, although Canada’s great Emile St. In 1927 he took his whole team to New England and proceeded to win race after race. Togo was a master at leading his team well out of reach of any other dogs on the trail.Īfter the successful life-saving race to Nome, Seppala toured the East Coast of the United States. Perhaps this is one of the ways a future lead dog learns part of his lessons, for Togo became the best passer Seppala ever had.
LEONHARD SEPPALA FREE
Part of his early training including running free beside the big team, which he loved, but one day he ran into a team of tough Malamutes and was badly chewed up.
He was the offspring of some of Fox Ramsay’s Siberian imports. Togo, destined to be a hero as the result of his valiant leadership across the trackless treachery of Norton Sound, began life as a spoiled, hard to handle pup. Seppala’s leader by then was Togo, a son of Suggen. Seppala’s continuing success put him on “top of the list when the chairman of Nome’s Board of Health was looking for fast teams to go for the diphtheria serum being relayed in from Anchorage.”
LEONHARD SEPPALA DRIVER
Seppala’s appreciation of the imported huskies was immediately apparent and years later he wrote, “Once more the little Siberians had proved their superiority over the other dogs and I was proud to have been their driver and to have brought them in such good condition.” Seppala was to obtain permanent possession of the Siberians when Amundsen’s North Pole trip was cancelled. He repeated this feat in 1916, and 1917, winning both Sweepstakes by large margins. Seppala trained hard and in secret, far away from town and returned to win the race by over an hour in 1915. He started that race with a leader named Suggen, and he was hooked on sled dog racing. After losing the trail and injuring his dogs, Seppala finished last. The next year, 1914, he entered the All Alaska Sweepstakes with a team of young Siberian dogs he had been training for the explorer Roald Amundsen. His life swerved onto a new trail when inspired by the excitement of the new sled dog races in Nome, he entered and won his first race at age thirty-six. Within a few years Seppala had the reputation as one of the best dog punchers in the new territory.
He soon discovered that a steady, if less spectacular, way to make money was to have a dog team and to freight supplies to the miners. Even today, over one hundred years after his birth, many Siberian Huskies that race today are descended from Seppala’s Siberians.Īt the turn of the century young Seppala left his native Norway, his father’s fishing boat and his apprenticeship with a blacksmith, to join the hundreds of new explorers seeking their fortune in the gold fields of Alaska. There was no aspect of dog driving he left untouched. In 1961, at a testimonial banquet at the Alaska Press Club, Lowe Thomas introduced the 84-year-old musher with sparkling blue eyes as “the greatest dog team driver that ever lived.” For Seppala was an original, an innovator, and a pioneer.
Starting position Number One had been reserved in memory of the most distinguished dog driver of all time. When thirty four dog teams left the starting line in Anchorage on Mabound for Nome, in the first thousand-mile Seppala Memorial Iditarod Trail Race, no driver wore Number One. The longest sled dog race in North America was named for Seppala. Before his death in 1967 at the age of ninety, Seppala had been made an honorary member of four prestigious organizations: The Siberian Husky Club of America, The International Siberian Husky Club (which was originally chartered as the Seppala Siberian Husky Club), The New England Sled Dog Club and The Norwegian Sled Dog Club. His greatness has long outlasted his success as a racer. His fame has lasted far beyond his brief national acclaim following the race to Nome against an epidemic. No dog driver has the status, the renown and the respect of his colleagues as does Leonhard Seppala.
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