In another life, Rhoda Turinski would have been a participant in the 2022 Iditarod. 

"If I had come to Alaska sooner, I would have been a musher,” said Turinski.

But over the years, she thought if she couldn’t mush a dog team to victory, she could find another role to be part of the action.

"I wanted to be a sled holder, but they said, ‘Yeah, well, we’ll find you something else.’ They would not let me be a sled holder, a sled holder holds the dogs to keep them from running away, but they said, ‘Rhoda, we can find something else for you to do.’”

Alas, at age 92, Turinski, well, heck, let’s call her Rhoda, these days has to settle for being the number one uber fan of the world-famous "last great race,” the 1,000-mile Iditarod.

Rhoda, who lives in Kenai, has been a volunteer for longer than she can remember, doing everything from selling buttons and other merchandise to hosting Iditarod dinners. She came to Alaska from New York in 1958 when she was a mere 30 or so years old, just as the land known as "The Last Frontier” became America’s 49th state. Her Alaska sojourn goes back to the 1950s when Rhoda’s husband, John, was offered a job in Alaska while living in New York State.

He came to her with an idea.

"He said, ‘How would you like to live in Alaska?’ and I said, ‘That’s fine with me. Whither thou goest, you know,’” she said.

Goest, she did, and she has never looked back.

"I just fell in love with Alaska,” she said. "I loved watching the fur rendezvous and the Alaska Natives and their parkas. I fell in love with the people. I fell in love with Alaska Natives. They’re such quiet, calm, loving people. But the Iditarod is just part of why I love it.”

The Iditarod is a part of her love for Alaska, all right, a huge part.

Most of all, she loves the race because mushers fight not only for the best position and ultimate victory but also because they constantly battle the extreme elements while keeping their dogs safe but on track for the win.

"You have to be a bit crazy to do it. 40 below zero in the wilderness, running day and night, sunshine and snow, you’ve got to be crazy,” she said, a bit wistfully, as though she might have missed out on something.

Rhoda may think mushers are crazy, and it may even be how they think of themselves, but it’s with all the respect due to these world-class athletes – human and dog alike. It’s an admiration borne as much from the fun she gets from watching the race as it is from her desire to have been one of them if she’d had the opportunity.

When it comes to the Iditarod, she is as dedicated to the race as any baseball fan is to the National Pastime.

After all, deep down, Rhoda is a musher.

Rhoda, who said she attended her first Iditarod "so long ago I don’t remember,” has never lost her appetite for the race, and this year she plans to be in Anchorage for the start because, well, it’s in her heart, and because she relishes entire atmosphere of the contest.

"Either you have a sense of competition, or you don’t,” Rhoda said and, when asked to compare the modern race to the ones she watched decades ago, she added, "I don’t think there’s a difference. It’s not really different. It’s the same spirit; it’s exciting. It has much the same competitive spirit as it always did, I would say.”

While Rhoda can’t name a favorite sled dog, she does have a favorite musher: Lance Mackey, who won four consecutive races from 2007 to 2010. Not that she doesn’t love the others as well. But when she met Mackey at the finish line in Nome following one of his victories, she was pretty keyed up, almost as though she had won the race herself.

"At the end of the race, and I have the video, Lance won,” she said. "I was standing on the side of the road and I’m yelling, ‘Lance! Lance! Over here!’ And he came over to me and gave me a big hug.”

Once again, Rhoda will be there to watch the sleds and exhort the mushers to victory this year.

And she can’t think of being anywhere else.

"I think it’s the whole everything, the excitement,” she said of the race. "I’ve watched it for as many years as I’ve been here. It’s so much a part of Alaska.”