HUMAN

Name: Brian Patrick O’Donoghue

Age: 70

Residence: Fairbanks, Alaska

Occupation: Retired Journalist

First Year Ran Iditarod: 1991

How Many Years Involved With Iditarod: 8

Iditarod Role: Musher, journalist

Current Location: Fairbanks, Alaska

Date of Photo: June 21, 2026

Temperature: 79F outdoors

Question 1: What is it about running sled dogs that you love so much?

What I love about running sled dogs is each one has a personality, good and bad, but nothing is ever dull. If you have a good team and you know how to take care of them, they’ll just roll and it’s just a really beautiful way to see winter in Alaska.

Question 2: What, who or how and when & why did you first get involved running the Iditarod?

 

I got involved in running Iditarod actually because of an ad in “Editor and Publisher” to come work for a place called the Frontiersmen. And as it happened, Tim Mawry and I both landed in Alaska at the same time and ended up working at the Frontiersman in Wasilla, and the boss was Shelly Gill and she happened to be one of the first three women who ever ran Iditarod. And so right from the beginning, coverage of Iditarod was an important thing at the Frontiersmen. And for a couple years, Tim and I did various aspects of reporting on the race.

Eventually we both moved to Fairbanks and likewise continued to sort of cover things. Tim also got extremely caught up in the race and the Quest as well. And I think he ran something like… Well, he ran multiple Quests and gave the Iditarod a shot too. But anyway, being a person that enjoys the outdoors, when my brother’s father-in-law heard what we were doing in Alaska and covering these crazy races, he offered to sponsor me to run Iditarod out of the blue, and no strings attached, funded my whole race. We were able to put together a lot of dogs to run it living in the Fairbanks area back then, and that wasn’t a big problem. But you got to have a good lead dog and I had a great team. It was a very strong team. And then, man, the luck of the draw, I picked number two in the Iditarod and there is no number one musher and Iditarod because that’s the kind of more of the honorary musher.

Yeah, you’re honoring the traditional musher and so that put me leaving first and I did what I could and I kicked it in gear and I was just run over by just all these professional mushers. And some of them had told me exactly when they were going to pass me and how they’d rather if I went to the left or went to the right. It was very humbling just being burnt up by all these guys flooding past you. And at a certain point I ended up in the back end of the race and it became pretty intense, just trying to keep it together. And over time, every single person I passed after having started first, ending up being last, every single person I passed was out of the race because as I moved up just clinging onto whatever worked, when people… When I passed them, they were gone.

Question 3:  Tell me about just one of your most memorable Iditarod experiences running the Iditarod.

I guess my most memorable experience in the Iditarod had to do with when we were moving forward and the team was coming together pretty well and even gaining a little speed and all of a sudden we sort of took a turn that was unexpected and I found that I was in the local dump and the team basically had been chasing the smell of what was waiting and it was madness. The dogs just lost their minds. I was having to pull them out of different containers and pull them back and try to get the whole team lined out again and some would start to try to turn back again. I had a small little brilliant lead dog named Rainey and I had an old, big, strong partner that ran with her named Harley. And man, pulling Harley’s nose out of the dump was just about as tough as anything I’ve ever done.

Question 4: What in life do you know for sure?

 

What I know for sure in this life is that I have lucked out in many, many respects, but none as important as bumping into this Juneau girl that was covering the legislature and I managed to persuade her to marry me. And Kate Ripley, I love you and we’ve had a great run, and our three beautiful kids and what more can you ask for?