to the North Pole. Seppala was assigned to train the dogs. "I literally fell in love with them from the start", he recalled; "I could hardly wait for sledding snow to start their training". When Amundsen cancelled his trip a few weeks after the puppies arrived in Nome, Lindeberg gave them to Seppala. Seppala made the decision to compete in his first race, the 1914 All Alaska Sweepstakes, at the last minute. Neither he nor his canine freight leader, Suggen, knew the dangerous trail, and when a blizzard suddenly descended on the area during the race, Seppala realized his young dogs had lost the trail and they were all at great risk of death due to the nearby drop-off to the Bering Sea. Indeed, when the whiteout conditions suddenly lifted, Seppala found that he and his team were at the bottom of a hill, racing towards the cliffs along the sea. Fortunately, he succeeded in stopping 20 feet from the drop-off, saving all their lives. However, many of his dogs' paw pads had been shredded and claws broken by the ice-encrusted snow as they clawed their way back to the top of the hill. A few also suffered frostbite. Seppala felt he had abused the dogs' loyalty by putting them in danger of death and injury, and withdrew from the race in shame. He nursed them back to health for most of the remainder of that year; they were not ready to train again until autumn. Seppala's racing career took off the following year, at the 1915 All Alaska Sweepstakes. After a close competition between him and experienced musher Scotty Allan, Seppala defeated him on the fourth day of the race and finished two hours ahead of Allan to win the Sweepstakes. He went on to win the race the following two years, as well, at which point the All Alaska Sweepstakes was suspended until 1983. Role in the "Great Race of Mercy" of 1925 A diphtheria outbreak struck Seppala's town of Nome, Alaska in the winter of 1925. Previously unexposed children as well as adults were at risk of dying from the infection. Seppala's only child—an eight-year-old daughter named Sigrid—was also at risk. The only treatment available in 1925 was diphtheria antitoxin serum. However, the town's supply was not only insufficient but also of presumably low efficacy, being past its expiry date. Without the antitoxin, estimated mortality rates stood