Iron Dog 2024: Team 14′s snowmachine caught fire in White Mountain. Two hours later they’re back on trail in title contention.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - One of the top contending Iron Dog teams — Team 14 of Casey Boylan and Bryan Leslie — ran into a brief bout of trouble Thursday morning.
Team 14 entered White Mountain in second place at 9:37 a.m. Thursday. After fueling, Boylan began to pull out to begin the trek to the next checkpoint, when his snowmachine caught fire.
“Woah, woah, fire! Fire!” community members yelled out as Boylan looked down and quickly hopped off his machine, as seen on a Facebook Live video posted to an Iron Dog Group page. The flames are noticed at the 2-minute, 50-second mark.
An Iron Dog checker quickly moved into action with a fire extinguisher to put out the initial flames, but they kept reigniting. One fire extinguisher wasn’t enough as a second had to be retrieved as the machine continued to burn for more than two minutes before it finally gave out.
There were no injuries to Team 14, Iron Dog volunteers and community members reported.
The race’s leaders, Team 39, were seen assisting during the scary situation. The machine still started, and Team 14′s hopes of finishing were still alive. Not only that, but their hopes of winning their first Iron Dog are still alive.
Team 14 took just a two-hour layover in White Mountain to get the machine back in race condition before heading back to Koyuk, where their reported speeds were over 70 mph. At last check, the incident dropped Team 14 from second to fifth place, but it could have resulted in a scratch all together.
Boylan and Leslie are perennial contenders in what is known as the world’s longest, toughest snowmobile race — they just can’t seem to shake some bad luck. The tandem was leading the 2021 Iron Dog down the final stretch before a mechanical issue set them back to a runner-up finish. In 2022, they were in second place, but they had to scratch in Nome due to injuries suffered by Leslie on the way to the halfway point. They received another second-place finish in 2023.
Continue to monitor Alaska’s News Source for updates along the Iron Dog trail and follow the leaderboard on the Iron Dog website.
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