Canada’s Yukon Quest sled dog race will not run this year. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported Wednesday that there’s nobody left to organize it, according to mushers and former board members.
Alaska’s Yukon Quest, however, is still happening in early February, and it will have its longest route yet — covering 750 miles between its start and finish in Fairbanks.
Yukon Quest Alaska board president Lisa Mackey said her heart breaks for her Canadian counterparts. But she knows how hard it is to put on a long-distance race.
“I don't think that people realize, behind the scenes, all the moving parts it takes,” Mackey said. “We have been not only working our day jobs, but also putting countless hours into making sure that this happens and it's smooth.”
The races used to be one and the same. Prior to 2022, the Yukon Quest was organized by two boards: one American and one Canadian. Mushers raced a nearly 1,000-mile route from Fairbanks to Whitehorse, in the Yukon territory. But pandemic-era border restrictions and disagreements over mandatory rest times for dogs caused a rift that broke the Yukon Quest into two smaller races on either side of the border.
Mackey said she hopes to see the Canadian race get back on its feet, and maybe someday reunify with Alaska’s.
“There is no bad blood between Canada and us,” she said. “I think that we've all just been trying to get our foundations back underneath us since COVID. It’s hard to put a race together, but it’s easy to rip it apart.”
But she said her hopes are tempered by reality, and that reunification would take a lot of hard work and time.
The Yukon Quest board in Canada could not be reached for comment.