Podium finishers gearing up for the biggest Iron Dog battle yet
2024 podium finishers, from left to right: Team 14 (second place) Casey Boylan and Bryan Leslie; Team 39 (first place) Brett Lapham and Cody Barber; and Team 6 (third place) Bradley Kishbaugh and Mike Morgan. Teams 14 and 6 will be returning, while Team 39 takes an Iron Dog hiatus, leaving the new title up to the remaining teams. Photo: Tracy Try Photography
When Brett Lapham and Cody Barber stood atop the 2024 Iron Dog champion’s podium, the realization of their long-time dream to win the World’s Longest, Toughest Snowmobile Race began to sink in.
“To finally be able to win was super, super exciting,” said Lapham, who captured his first victory with his brother-in-law in 2024. “After doing this eight years – and I think Cody’s been in it 10 to 11 years – we had an ongoing joke: ‘Once we win this thing, we will be done.’”
True to their word, the 2024 champions will not be back in Iron Dog to defend their title in 2025. They are the first defending champions to not return to the race since Cory Davis and Ryan Simons won in 2017. But, Lapham said, the two are far from “done” with racing.
“A couple of years ago, I probably would have continued, but we were at a point for a break now,” Lapham said. “It is very time consuming, and both Cody and I have young kids. For now, we will take a couple of years off, but we will be back.”
LOOKING BACK AT 2024
The 2024 race was indeed a nail-biter for those on the sidelines watching. For most of the race, Team 14’s Casey Boylan and Bryan Leslie were in the lead, and it seemed as if they would be hard to beat. But – as is always a risk in Iron Dog – a late-in-the game mechanical slowed them down, whittling away at the precious minutes they had on their competitors.
“It was incredibly hard for me to smile,” Boylan said of standing on the podium at second place – while still acknowledging that getting to the podium at all is quite an honor. “That’s our third second-place finish. In 2021, our sleds blew up. In 2023, we just didn’t go fast enough.”
But 2024 was just within their reach, they said.
“You always want to be the first of your brand,” Leslie said. “And last year (2024) was the first year we were beaten on our own brand (Polaris). That was hard. We’re all buddies, we’re friends with Cody and Brett. But at the same time, you don’t want your friend beating you.”
Team 6’s Mike Morgan and Bradley Kishbaugh were new partners in 2024, which always brings an unknown to how a race will unfold. So their third-place finish was what Morgan would call a “good start.” Still, like so many of their high-caliber racing peers, he and Kishbaugh are hungry for the win.
“We had a winning pace – we were just one mechanical outside of winning the race,” Morgan said. “We’re going to run a pretty similar pace to what we did last year and try to prevent that same issue from happening. We are going to try and run clean and run smart. The guys that come out at the front at the end are the ones that run clean.”
Iron Dog family and friends show their support for Red Dog Loop favorites Team 33 Skyler Wells (fifth from left) and George Lambert (fourth from right). The two were plagued with mechanicals and several high-speed get-offs in the 2024 race, but persevered. They were less than 300 miles from the finish when forced out, but their Iron Dog spirit continues. Lambert is taking a year off and Wells is back to race with Kenny Kleewein. Photo: Melissa DeVaughn
George “Radar” Lambert and Skyler Wells, in their bid to be competitive, felt the sting of not-so-clean races themselves in 2024. Lambert, a crowd favorite especially along the Red Dog Loop, scratched out early in his 2023 race bid, so all eyes and cheers of encouragement were on he and new partner Wells in the 2024 race. They started out strong, staying in the front pack for the first 1/3 of the race, but then mishap after mishap plagued them.
“It was rough, but we really hoped to get there,” said Lambert, who had several get-offs during the race before the two were forced to scratch in Nikolai – a heart-breaking 286 miles from the finish – with a broken A-arm and no spare parts with which to fix it. Lambert, bruised, battered and hobbling with clear discomfort at the Iron Dog finish, still came out to cheer on his fellow competitors. Ever smiling despite their setbacks, Lambert said the Iron Dog shows no mercy.
“It is a hard race and an expensive race,” he said. “I’m going to take this year off. I got a new job, and I can’t take all the time off this year for training, but I definitely will be back next year. We were so close. We have to try again.”
Wells, who won the popular Archie Ferguson snowmachine race in Kotzebue – thus earning him free entry into the 2025 Iron Dog – said that is the only way he could have afforded it. In 2025, he is partnering with four-time Iron Dog finisher Kenny Kleewein to make another bid at finishing the race.
“(Radar and I) had a pretty good run all the way up to Buckland there – he had a few get-offs,” Wells said. “We took off from there in a storm in the nighttime, got in and got fueled up. Then Radar had another get-off from Kotzebue to Buckland, and that slowed us down a little bit.”
But the final nail happened as the two, who had already made several mechanical repairs along the way, headed southbound toward Nikolai.
“I nicked a tree getting off the river out of Nikolai and broke my A-arm,” Wells said. “We didn’t have any spare parts, or we couldn’t get anything, so that was the end of it for us. … This race, you’ve got to be mentally and physically strong and push through it all.”
Morgan said the 2024 race – just like those before it and those to come – will always come down to skill and experience.
“People toss the word ‘luck’ around in this race, but really you create your own luck,” he said. “We train a lot and do a lot of the testing with the equipment. If something goes wrong, I’m always hard on myself. I always point the finger back at myself, not good luck or bad luck. There are things that are out of your control, like fighting Mother Nature, but we are all doing that at the same time.”
LOOKING AHEAD TO 2025
The 2025 race is arguably the most competitive field of athletes in the race’s history. If the racers of 2024 thought it was tough then, the 41st running of Iron Dog might elevate that perception even further. Not only will Teams 14 and 6 be back to further their podium pursuits, but they will be joined by a group of powerhouse pros back in the race.
Champions of the 2021 race, Team 20 Robby Schachle and Brad George, are back after a hiatus. Cory Davis, the 2017 champion, returns with new partner and pro racer Wes Selby of Colorado as Team 21. Team 8 Tom Davis is joining with 2016 Iron Dog champion Tyson Johnson, and Team 10’s Chris Olds and Ryan Sottosanti – who placed fifth last year – are in the mix. Perhaps most notable among the 2025 field is Team 7’s Nick Olstad and Tyler Aklestad. They were forced out after a mechanical in 2024 and are itching to regain their dominance in the field.
“I see about five or six really strong teams that could be fighting for the win this year,” Morgan said. “I think it’s going to be tight, so we are going to have to be smart making passes. We have to run our own race, especially in the first 500 miles.”
Leslie said he thinks the speeds are going to be faster too.
“I would say the top five teams are not going to get spread out like years past,” he said. “It is a pretty stacked field this year compared to other years. This is obviously good for the sport and the level of racing. Some of the guys just coming back might have a little struggle though. The race has gotten faster and longer. It’s not like it used to be.”
Morgan agrees: “When Tyler and Nick teamed up in 2020, they increased the pace of the whole race because those guys are some of the best in the world,” he said.
“This is the year where everyone’s going to be there,” Boylan said. “We are so close. I fully believe we are competitive with anyone who lines up, anytime. The work we are putting in is going to keep us competitive.”
Schachle and George are excited to be in this potentially chaotic mix, and like all pros are focused on racing their own race and controlling what they can.
“Brad and I have never actually worked out at all in the gym – we just rode, rode, rode,” he said. “This year, we go three times a week and meet at the gym at 5 a.m. and work out for an hour, hour and a half. I’m not 20 years old anymore, and there are a lot of great racers out there.”
Mike Vasser, Iron Dog’s executive director, said it’s easy to underestimate the physicality that is required to race a motorized piece of equipment. While the engines create the speed, the riders themselves have to be able to control it – and it’s not easy.
“I view these competitors as the greatest athletes in the world today,” Vasser said. “The elements they deal with are incredible – including physical conditioning, mechanics capabilities, extreme speeds and terrain, Mother Nature’s unpredictability, strategy components, and mental toughness and focus. They are the greatest!”
As the days draw closer to the 41st running of Iron Dog, 2024 champion Lapham said being on the sidelines in 2025 will be bittersweet.
“With so many past champions and past teams, it’s one of those things where I wish I was racing because it’s going to be so competitive – I’ll miss that part of it,” he said. “But it is also one of the best years to watch with so many teams. I’ll be in Nome, helping quite a few teams wrench – maybe a little bit on a trail as people are leaving. I won’t be racing, but I won’t be far away.”
The 2025 Iron Dog begins at 10 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 15, at Big Lake. For the latest news follow Iron Dog on Facebook @IronDogSnowmobileRace or on our website https://www.irondog.org/race/news