Outdoors/Adventure

Girdwood musher Petit scores first big victory with win at Kobuk 440

Girdwood musher Nicolas Petit capped a wire-to-wire victory early Sunday morning by capturing first in the Kobuk 440, the final big sled-dog race of the season in Alaska.

Petit rolled across the finish line at 1:47 a.m. after 41 hours on the trail from Kotzebue to Noorvik, Selawik, Ambler, Shungnak and Kobuk before returning. He had a comfortable lead of one hour, 51 minutes over Noah Burmeister. Jason Mackey was third, another 22 minutes back.

The field of 14 mushers also included 2011 Iditarod champion John Baker of Kotzebue, who finished fifth.

Petit, 36, was seventh in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race last month, his third top-10 finish in the 1,000-mile race to Nome. In the 2015 Iditarod, he won the coveted Leonhard Seppala Humanitarian Award for exemplary dog care. Burmeister was 11th in this year's Iditarod.

Sunday's win was the biggest victory of Petit's career; he finished second at the 2014 Copper Basin 300.

Petit was born outside of Paris but spent the first 12 years of his life in Normandy before moving to New Mexico at age 12. A ski bum, Petit moved to Girdwood in 2000, helping run sled dog tours there for Billy Snodgrass, a four-time Iditarod finisher. That gave Petit his first taste of dog mushing.

The Kobuk 440 coincides with the Arctic Circle Spring Festival in Kotzebue, which runs through Monday.

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