Iditarod Musher Profile

Jim Lanier, 70, was born in Washington, DC and raised in Fargo, North Dakota, where his family moved when he was six years old. After receiving his medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis, he moved to Alaska in 1967 to serve at the Native Hospital with the US Public Health Service. A pathologist at Providence Hospital for thirty years, Jim is now retired. He began mushing in 1977 and says he got the bug from Iditarod mushers Ron Gould, Dinah Knight, and Gerry Riley. Jim ran his first Iditarod in 1979. Never having scratched, he has now entered and completed fourteen Iditarods, including at least one in all five decades that the race has been in existence.

His goal is to make it six decades and in a competitive fashion. "After that, who knows?" Jim says, "Health aside, it's a matter of continued enjoyment of the dreaming, the planning, the training, the support of family, friends and sponsors, and of going head-to-head" with people half his age and younger. His specialty is his white dogs and therefore, "Northern Whites Kennel."

Jim is married to Anna Bondarenko, the first Russian woman to enter and complete "The Last Great Race" (2000). He is the father of four, Margaret, 42, Kim, 41, Willy, 32, and Jimmy, 13, and also the grandfather of four, Annie, Ethan, Logan, and Jessie. His hobbies include singing, commercial fishing, hunting, reading, writing, and raising kids!