For Immediate Release:
March 14, 2023
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
Nome, Alaska – Below, please find a statement from PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman in response to Ryan Redington’s winning the 2023 Iditarod today:
Crossing the Iditarod’s finish line first makes Ryan Redington this year’s biggest loser in PETA’s eyes. Eight dogs had to be pulled from the race after Redington pushed them beyond the breaking point, including Wildfire, who was predictably seen favoring the leg broken by the snowmobile that had hit him last year. Only six dogs were left to drag Redington to the finish, with reports that he yanked on and physically pulled the visibly exhausted dogs to the White Mountain checkpoint, and he’ll thank them all by chaining them back up outside like old bicycles at his kennel. The Iditarod needs to end, and with the race losing sponsors left and right, musher enrollment at an all-time low, and the Iron Dog snowmobile race and the human-powered Iditarod Trail Invitational growing in popularity, that end is coming.
So far, more than 150 dogs have been pulled from this year’s race. Among other incidents, a musher fell asleep on the trail, allowing his dog team to run off by themselves. Cue Health and Greenbrook TMS recently dropped their Iditarod sponsorships after hearing from PETA and over 40,000 of the group’s supporters. More details about the 2023 Iditarod are available here.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
