Huntington-Olds team wins the Iron Dog snowmachine race

Tyler Huntington of Fairbanks and Chris Olds of Eagle River repeated as Iron Dog champions early Saturday evening, passing the team of Todd Palin and Eric Quam in the final 100 miles of the 2,000-mile snowmachine race across Alaska.

Olds and Huntington told Channel 2 at the finish line that they thought their chances of repeating were doomed when a belt broke on one of their Polaris Rush 600s right before Manley, 300 miles from the Fairbanks finish line.

"Four hours ago, I thought it was over," Huntington said.

"But we regrouped and here we are," Olds said.

Huntington and Olds eked out a two-minute lead going into Tanana earlier Saturday.

But Palin, a three-time champ, and Quam, a 2008 champ, surged past them and reached Nenana 17 minutes ahead of Huntington and Olds.

But after leaving Nenana, Palin had trouble with one of the skis on his Arctic Cat F6 600 and had to stop to fix it, giving Huntington and Olds the break they needed.

They claimed the lead on the 77-mile run from Nenana to North Pole, arriving at North Pole with a 14-minute lead that more than held up over the final 35 miles to Fairbanks.

Huntington and Olds, who will share the first-place prize of $50,000, reached the finish line at 5:51 p.m. Saturday. Palin and Quam finished at 6:09 p.m. and the father-son team of Scott and Cory Davis claimed third place about 10 minutes later.

Much of the pace and outcome of the 26th edition of the race was dictated by weather.

The early leaders, Marc McKenna and Dusty Van Meter, lost command when their sleds got stuck in overflow on the Yukon River near Nulato.

And for the better part of two days, the race stalled in Nome because of what officials called "life-threatening" trail conditions. Race officials ordered the race run under a yellow caution flag for the first 250 miles of the trip to Fairbanks, from Nome to Unalakleet.