ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Nearly a year to the date, Emily Robinson repeated a storybook finish to a historic race. For consecutive years, the teenage mushing phenom out-mushed a former Iditarod champion to win the Knik 200 and earn Athlete of the Week honors.
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It was a story so good, it needed a sequel.
One year ago, teenage mushing phenom Emily Robinson and her four-legged athletes stunned a field of Iditarod veterans on their way to a Knik 200 Joe Redington Sr. Memorial Sled Dog Race victory.
Pawing the line this year, she was no longer an underdog, but a top dog, as the defending champion of the race and the Knik 100 winner just two weeks prior.
Robinson, 17, reached the halfway point of the race one minute behind 2023 Iditarod Champion Ryan Redington, the grandson of the race’s namesake. Pulling the hook just before midnight, Robinson and company dashed through the night 20 minutes faster than the rest of the field that included nine Iditarod veterans, and reached Knik Lake in first place at 6:31 a.m. Sunday morning to win her second consecutive Knik 200.
Last year Emily’s father, Walter, excitedly waited for her at the finish line as they celebrated the monumental achievement together. This year, Walter also signed up for the Knik 200, so Emily would probably prefer not to see him him waiting at the finish line, because that means he would have beaten her.
“It is a good ole family rivalry, we’re talking smack with each other and that sort of thing,” Emily said in the dog lot ahead of this year’s Knik 200. “I’ve run quite a few dog races with him, so it is always fun to be doing a family affair, going out there in the races and seeing what we do.”
“It is pretty cool to be out here running with her this year,” Walter added. “It wasn’t really in the plans but we have a group of young dogs and decided to run a team, she has the main team, but I’ll still be giving her a run for her money.”
This time around, Emily waited for Walter at the finish line, as he arrived with the rest of the Robinson Racing Kennel athletes at 7:29 a.m. in 6th place.
Emily, the 2024 Alaska Sports Hall of Fame Girls Pride of Alaska Award winner, is a three-time Jr. Iditarod Champion and could become the first musher in history to four-peat this February. The Nenana musher is not just the ‘next big thing’ in the sport, but has arrived as a both a competitor and advocate in the sport.
“I would’ve never expected to have been able to do this when I was 5, 6 years old, if you had told me I was doing these things, I wouldn’t have believed you,” Emily said on Saturday. “It is just super cool to have raised puppies my entire life, going on dog runs ever since I was 3 years old, and to be out here in the racing community, having my dog team show off what they can do. That’s what’s really important to me, showing what my dogs are capable of.”
“It has been pretty amazing,” Walter said of his daughter’s accomplishments. “She is living my dream, really, because I grew up dog mushing. What she is doing is amazing, she has been running dogs since she was 6 or 7. She works really hard at it and she devotes her life to it, so it is pretty amazing.”
The 2025 Jr. Iditarod, set for February 22 at Knik Lake, will be Robinson’s final before we may see her with the big dogs of the Iditarod next year.
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