Iditarod on Discovery 2008 – Ep 1
15. Oct, 2008 
3 Comments
I just watched the first episode in the Discovery Channel’s new series “Toughest Race on Earth: Iditarod”. As a fan of the race for years and as someone who spends time following every moment while the race is in full swing it was fun to watch the sport from this perspective. I’ve never quite been happy with how the Iditarod has been covered in the national media (a part of the reason I’ve continued this blog). This is such an amazing sport with such amazing athletes… nothing has ever quite “gotten it” when trying to tell the full story. I think Discovery is well on its way to being the first mainstream show to fully capture the race and its competitors.
Over the next few weeks as the show airs, I’ll be going back providing links to the posts that I wrote during the period of the race that happened during each episode. For those of you who didn’t follow along last March, you’ll get to re-live how we saw the race unfold… you’re seeing it on TV, but now you’ll get one more perspective as if it was happening all over again.
Iditarod 2008: Ceremonial Start – Rainy Pass
3. Yentna: Goodbye Willow – Hello Alaskan Wilderness
4. Rainy Pass: Into Rainy Pass & The GPS Impact
Let us know what you thought of the Iditarod show on Discovery this week…. post your comment below!
I’ll be back next week with more thoughts and a repost of the next series of blogs! (of course you can always read ahead too!).
Thank you for posting the links to the older posts. I’ll be re-reading your posts again. I follow the Iditarod from the lower 48 and your blog was the first place I checked for news and updates.
I really enjoyed last nights episode. To see what the mushers go thru, feeding the dogs, figuring out where and when to camp. It deepened my understanding of the race and how hard it really is. And I loved all the scenes with the dogs! Huskies are my favorite breed and the episode was husky eye candy.
- Patsy
Hi,
The 2008 Iditarod aired on discovery channel in February 2009 in Sydney and was absolutely fabulous, we fell in love with the race through the TV screen.
It documents the good and the bad times mushers face along the trail as well as their dogs, it also gives a very detailed insight into just how much care and attention is given to each mushers team, more then you would expect. The series truly conveys just how hard the race is to finish and the strength and perserverance required to continue on through such tough terrain.
In Sydney you can only imagine temperatures below 0 degrees except in remote parts of Australia during winter, whereas in Alaska people live in this climate.
Favourite moment from episode 1: The fight between Hobo and Larry, Lance Mackey talking about them, hillarius. “Hobo & Larry are my 2 main leaders, Hobo’s my speed and Larry’s my brains”
Great coverage of a great race, unfortunately there was no 2009 coverage of the race and here we stumbled along Iditablog.com, would love to say your site is fabulous keeping us up to date on everything that happened during the race even though we’re in Australia.
Great site, can’t wait for next year, hope Mackey can make it 4 in a row!