San Francisco - Several dozen dog sledders were to begin the 1,700-kilometre Iditarod race across frozen Alaska on Sunday.
The 67 mushers and their dogs hope to complete the course from Willow, some 80 kilometres north of Anchorage, to Nome, some 150 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle.
On Saturday, the racers participated in a ceremonial start in Anchorage, where temperatures were described in local newspaper the Anchorage Daily News as "a comfortable" negative 9 degrees Celsius.
The record for the race across the snow-covered landscape is nine days.
It is the 37th running of the race that marks a 1925 trip by a dog sled team to bring medicine to isolated Nome, which was suffering from a diphtheria outbreak.
Among the favourites are Lance Mackey, who won the last two years and whose father and brother are among past winners, and Sebastian Schnuelle, a German living in Canada who last month won the 1,600 Yukon Quest race from Canada to Alaska. (dpa)
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Iditarod is cruel to dogs
The Iditarod is terribly cruel to dogs.
What happens to dogs in the Iditarod includes: death, paralysis, frostbite of the penis and scrotum, bleeding ulcers, bloody diarrhea, ruptured discs, lung damage, pneumonia, viral diseases, torn muscles and tendons, broken bones, sprains, vomiting, torn footpads, broken teeth and anemia.
At least 136 dogs have died in the Iditarod. There is no official count of dog deaths available for the race's early years.