Susan Butcher biography
Susan Butcher, in full Susan Howlet Butcher, (born December 26, 1954, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.—died August 5, 2006, Seattle, Washington), American sled-dog racer and coach who dominated her sport for greater than a decade, profitable the difficult Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska 4 instances.
Butcher started to coach canines at age 16. By 1972 she had moved to Colorado, the place she attended Colorado State University in Fort Collins and raced a gaggle of fifty Alaskan huskies owned by a neighborhood musher. Butcher moved to Alaska in 1975 to start out her personal kennel. A critical athlete from the outset, she broke onto the worldwide mushing scene in 1979 after driving a workforce of huskies to the highest of Denali (Mount McKinley).
Butcher first entered the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in 1978. The roughly 1,100-mile (1,770-km) Iditarod is the longest and most bodily difficult of all sled-dog races. Butcher twice completed in second place (1982, 1984). She started the 1985 race with a stable lead however was eradicated from the competitors when a moose charged throughout her path, killing 2 of her canines and wounding 13. That 12 months Butcher misplaced to Libby Riddles her probability to turn into the primary girl to win the Iditarod. The following 12 months, nevertheless, Butcher got here in first with a record-breaking time of 11 days 15 hours 6 minutes. She was victorious in each 1987 and 1988 to turn into the one musher within the historical past of the game to win the Iditarod in three consecutive years. She received for a fourth time in 1990.
Butcher retired from aggressive sledding in 1994 and opened a kennel in Eureka, Alaska, the place she housed greater than 150 huskies and educated canines year-round. She was thought-about by many to be one of many strongest and most-disciplined feminine athletes of the twentieth century for her willpower to rise to the highest of a bodily grueling sport that's dominated by males. In 2006 Butcher died of leukemia.