Will Dallas Seavey join exclusive club of 4-time Iditarod winners?

Call it the pantheon.

That's the rarefied air inhabited by just six mushers who have won at least four Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Races. Even to casual fans, these champions are household names: Mackey, King, Buser, Swingley, Swenson, Butcher.

• He's hot, with three victories in the last four Iditarods — beaten only by a man with the same genome, his father Mitch Seavey.

• He's fast, with his 2014 race establishing a new race record of 8 days, 13 hours, 4 minutes.

• He's young, just 29 by race day and already the youngest champion ever.

• He's plucky and clutch, having overhauled Jeff King and Yukon Quest champion Aliy Zirkle on the home stretch of that 2014 race during a fierce Seward Peninsula ground blizzard that forced the world's best mushers to take cover.

• He's innovative, using a special 53-foot-long treadmill this summer to aid his sled dogs' summer training. "We're not going to use this every day, year-round," Seavey said. "But it could be the next evolution of the sport and I want to be in front of the learning curve."

• He's tough, one of the survivalists featured in "Ultimate Survival Alaska" program on the National Geographic Channel, which describes the program as "the ultimate test of survival in Arctic conditions" where competitors use "their raw, mountain-man ingenuity to navigate through treacherous glaciated river valleys and high mountain peaks, battling hunger, hostile predators and perilous weather conditions." Sounds almost like the Iditarod.

Who's going to beat that? And more to the point, how? Ask the only musher to do so, Mitch Seavey, whose 2013 victory — Dallas finished fourth — made him the oldest champion in race history.

"Dallas always comes across as a know-it-all and, in reality, I've taught him everything — in fact, maybe how to be a know-it-all," Mitch says in a video on Dallas' website in which father and son trade good-natured barbs while trying to outdo each other by being the fastest at putting booties on dogs. "Dallas usually thinks he knows everything, but he's going to find out a few tricks.

"You're not going to beat me in the Iditarod no matter how fast you bootie."

"Is my dad competitive?" Dallas says in the video. "Absolutely. We're both in the same sport, and usually we've been working together and now we have the two most successful kennels in Alaska butting heads as we go into the next Iditarod."

Fierce competition

To be sure, they won't be the only mushers butting heads. Five other champions — four-time winners Martin Buser, Lance Mackey and Jeff King, two-time victor Robert Sorlie and 2011 winner John Baker head into the 1,000-mile race knowing what it takes to win. A growing group of mushers with top-10 credentials has a pretty good idea, too.

Before the first dog paw hits the starting line, a race record has already been set. This year's Iditarod will see the largest contingent of entrants from one foreign country, with eight Norwegians racing to Nome. Among them is two-time champion Sorlie, the only Iditarod champion from another country.

Besides Sorlie, the Norwegian posse includes:

• Sigrid Ekran, 37, of Alvdal, a three-time Iditarod finisher who's gotten as high as 11th. She's also won the Femondslopet and the Finnmarkslopet races in her home country.

• Geir Idar Hjelvik, 54, of Norjordet, who's been mushing since 1987 and will take a team owned by defending champion Dallas Seavey to Nome.

• Ralph Johannessen, 56, of Dagali, who, according to the Iditarod, is considered "the reigning Norwegian long-distance champion."

• Joar Leifseth Ulsom, 29, of Mo i Rana, who already owns the fastest rookie run in Iditarod history, and has finished in the top-seven in all three of his races to Nome. In January, Ulsom was third behind Bethel's Pete Kaiser and Eureka's Brent Sass in the Kuskokwim 300, the world's richest middle-distance race.

• Lars Monsen, 52, of Skiptvet, a former teacher who's now an adventurer and author some 18 books on his expeditions, including several in Alaska. He's an experienced distance musher in Norway.

• Dag Torulf Olsen, 51, of Hammerfest, who's been running dogs since 1993.

• Ketil Reitan, 55, of Tondheim, who met his wife in Kaktovik and now leads photo tours by boat to photograph polar bears on Alaska's North Slope. He first ran the Iditarod in 1991 and racked up four other finishes, including 10th in 1992.

Whether the Norwegian posse has enough speed and endurance to topple the Alaskans remains to be seen. But they seem likely to be the fastest European team in the race. Their only competition, after all, is Mats Pettersson of Sweden.

Contact Mike Campbell at mcampbell@alaskadispatch.com