The final countdown: Our top 3 Alaska sports stories of the decade

Editor’s note: We picked the top 11 Alaska sports stories of the decade. Here are our top three picks, plus some other stories of note. (Read about Nos. 7-11 here, and Nos. 4-6 here.)

No. 3: Dallas Seavey: fast times, rough times

With four Iditarod victories before the age 30, Dallas Seavey appeared poised to be the face of the race for years to come.

He was the youngest musher to win the 1,000-mile sled dog race to Nome when he triumphed in 2012 at age 25. He added three more victories in 2014, 2015 and 2016, setting speed records in 2014 and 2016.

Seavey entered the 2017 race with an excellent chance of tying Rick Swenson’s record of five titles that has stood since 1991. He wound up placing second, less than three hours behind his dad, Mitch.

Then came scandal — allegations of dog doping. Four of Seavey’s dogs tested positive for Tramadol, a prohibited painkiller, after the 2017 race.

Seavey spent months proclaiming his innocence and denouncing the Iditarod’s handling of the case, and in December 2018 he receive a measure of redemption: a written statement from the Iditarod board of directors clearing him of any involvement in the drugging.

Seavey said he was pleased with the outcome. The Iditarod said it doesn’t think it will ever know who gave Tramadol to the dogs.

In the meantime, Swenson’s record of five Iditarod victories remains unmatched.

Seavey, a third-generation Iditarod musher whose grandfather Dan was a race pioneer and whose dad Mitch is a three-time champ, has yet to return to the race. After registering nine straight top-10 finishes from 2009 to 2017, Seavey sat out the last two Iditarods and is not signed up for the 2020 race.

No. 2: Mount Marathon record book gets a rewrite

For decades, the Mount Marathon record book appeared to be written in stone:

Bill Spencer, 43:21, 1981.

Spencer’s much-revered record stood year after year for more than 30 years despite some of Alaska’s fittest athletes taking aim at it. The record seemed more solid than the mountain itself.

And then it fell. And fell again. And fell yet again.

Three times in a four-year span, the record book got a rewrite.

The first to take down the mark set by eight-time champion Spencer was Eric Strabel of Anchorage. In 2013, he made the run up and down the 3,022-foot mountain in Seward in 42 minutes, 55 seconds.

The record lasted two years. In 2015, professional mountain runner Kilian Jornet of Spain lowered it to 41:48.

On that memorable day in Seward, both the men’s and women’s records crumbled like Gibraltar. While Jornet took nearly a minute off Strabel’s record, professional mountain runner Emelie Forsberg of Sweden took nearly three minutes off the 25-year-old women’s record. She ran a 47:48 to blow away the 1990 record of 50:30 set by six-time winner Nancy Pease of Anchorage.

Forsberg’s record has yet to be challenged, but Jornet’s lasted all of one year.

In 2016, David Norris — a skier from Anchorage by way of Fairbanks — chopped 22 seconds off Jornet’s mark with a time of 41:26. In the finish chute, dozens of runners congratulated Norris for putting an Alaskan back in the Mount Marathon record book.

“He’s gonna be a rock star forever,” said one.

No. 1: Kikkan Randall wins Olympic gold

The last 1,250 meters of Kikkan Randall’s Olympic career kept a lot of Alaskans awake deep into a historic night in February 2018.

In the last race of her fifth and final Winter Olympics, Randall captured a gold medal in the women’s team sprint in Pyeongchang, South Korea, teaming with Jessie Diggins of Minnesota for a scintillating victory in the women’s team sprint.

It was America’s first Olympic gold medal in cross-country skiing, and it came in thrilling fashion — a down-to-the-wire finish regarded as one of Pyeongchang’s greatest moments.

It’s the sports story of the decade for Alaska.

Randall, 35 at the time, skied the first, third and legs of the race, which consisted of six laps around a 1.25-kilometer loop. When she tagged off to Diggins for the final time, she had the United States less than one second out of the lead.

Diggins seized the lead in the final few meters, collapsed upon finishing. She didn’t know she had crossed the finish line first until Randall ran over and pounced on her in celebration.

“I think of it as a story that I might read to my son one day. It’s a fairy tale,” Randall said after the race. “I remember competing in my first Olympics in Salt Lake City, finishing 44th and feeling so far from that podium and yet still feeling that glimmer of hope. And then progressively getting closer and closer in each Olympics.”

It was a fitting end for a glorious career. Randall, an East High graduate, collected three World Championship medals, three World Cup sprint titles and more than 30 World Cup podium finishes in a U.S. Ski Team career than spanned 16 years.

The entire decade belonged to Randall, who squeezed in a Mount Marathon victory in 2011.

When she wasn’t winning World Cup medals, she was spreading her enthusiasm for skiing and physical fitness in Alaska and beyond. She helped establish Fast and Female in the United States — a group that aims to empower girls through sports — and was a popular choice when a school or club needed a speaker guaranteed to engage a roomful of people.

Randall’s story didn’t end when her ski career did. A few months after she won the gold medal, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She waged a public battle against the disease and became an inspiration beyond the world of sports.

In November, less than a year after chemotherapy treatments, Randall ran her first marathon. She beat her goal of 3 hours by clocking a time of 2:55:12 in the New York City Marathon.

“It was exciting for me to get back to a goal,” Randall said after she finished. “The cancer thing, it’s part of my story now, but I’m hoping it’s not a defining chapter.”

A few more memories

They didn’t make the top 11, but here are 11 more big stories from the decade, in no particular order:

• Corey Cogdell of Eagle River captures her second Olympic medal in trapshooting, winning a shootout to claim the bronze medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. It was the second Olympic medal for Cogdell, who won bronze at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

• Andrew Kurka of Palmer strikes Paralympics gold, claiming gold and silver in sit-ski competition at the 2018 Winter Paralympics.

• Janay DeLoach of Fairbanks leaps to a bronze medal in the long jump at the 2012 Summer Olympics.

• Ruthy Hebard of Fairbanks and Kelsey Griffin of Chugiak excel in basketball. Hebard is a four-year starter and two-time All-America honorable mention pick for Oregon and a projected first-round pick for next year’s WNBA draft. Griffin was the No. 3 pick in the 2010 WNBA draft and played five seasons in the league, but really made a name for herself in Australia’s WNBL, winning three league titles and earning the 2019 MVP award.

• Alev Kelter of Eagle River becomes a mainstay USA Rugby’s women’s 7s team, helping the sport make its Olympic debut at the 2016 Summer Olympics and winning a silver medal at the 2015 Pan Am Games. Last spring she was the MVP in the World Rugby Women’s Sevens Series finale in France, where the Americans got their first Sevens Series tournament win in history.

• Sean Rash of Anchorage becomes a star in the PBA, getting 10 of his 14 PBA Tour victories this decade, including two in 2019. The Dimond High grad was the 2011-12 PBA Bowler of the Year.

• A hockey controversy draws the governor’s attention and culminates with the firing of longtime UAA athletic director Steve Cobb in May 2013. Soon after Cobb fired coach Dave Shyiak following several losing seasons, it was revealed that Shyiak had slashed a player with his stick during a 2011 practice. Cobb was criticized for his handling of the incident and for not including members of the hockey community in the search for a new coach. The day before his firing, former Gov. Sean Parnell instructed University of Alaska president Patrick Gamble to “take a stand” on UAA athletics.

• UAA’s cross country and track programs win 14 individual NCAA championships and produce dozens of All-Americans during the decade. Leading the way were distance runners Caroline Kurgat (seven NCAA titles from 2014-19) and Micah Chelimo (four NCAA titles from 2010-14).

• The Alaska Airlines Center opens in 2014, giving UAA athletics one of the best arenas in NCAA Division II and becoming the new home for a number of state high school championships, including basketball.

• Lael Wilcox of Anchorage becomes an international star in ultra-cycling, winning the overall title in the 4,200-mile Trans Am (Oregon to Virginia) in 2016, crushing the women’s record in the 2,745-mile Tour Divide (Alberta to New Mexico) in 2015 and claiming second place overall in a 1,056-mile bikepacking race in Kyrgyzstan earlier this year.

• The UAA volleyball team, a premier Division II program since the arrival of coach Chris Green in 2008, finishes as the NCAA Division II national runner-up in 2016. Led by All-America senior setter Morgan Hooe, the Seawolves finished the season with a 34-3 record.