Jacques Philip, Nenana Alaska

Jacques is from Nenana, Alaska and with his wife, Magali, has a kennel named Noatak Racing Team. Jacques was born and raised in France near Paris where he graduated from medical school in 1980. This is about when he started mushing after he brought his first sled dog back from the Yukon Territory, a Siberian Husky named Rhino. He raced limited class in Europe for 3 years before he went back to Alaska to run his first Iditarod in 1985. He enjoyed spending that winter with Joe Redington Sr, known as the “Father of the Iditarod”. Joe taught Jacques a lot about distance racing and gave Jacques a lot of advice when he took a team to the Summit of Denali (Mount Mac Kinley for non Alaskans).

As the passion for sled dogs took over Jacques and Magli’s lives, they moved to the Fairbanks area in 1993. The Fairbanks area is one of the best places in the world to run sled dogs, it can be quite cold at times, but there is usually good snow all winter and it hardly ever rains so the snow does not get icy.

Since the beginning, Jacques built a strong partnership with the dog food company Royal Canin that has been supporting his kennel for almost 20 years.

Jacques became an American citizen in 2002 and has no plans to move out of Alaska at the moment.

The last four summers Jacques has been working on Glaciers in Skagway and Juneau for Alaska Icefield Expeditions, allowing thousands of people to discover the sled dog sport.

Jacques has raced Iditarod, Kobuk 440, Alpirod (Europe), Seeley 200, Wyoming, Yellowknife, Fireplug, Fur Rendez-Vous, ONAC, Grand Odyss’ee (France), Kamchadal (Russia) and many more.

Web Site www.noatak.com