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The Day in (No) Sports

Iditarod Champion and His Dogs Finally Make It Home

Thomas Waerner of Norway and his sled dogs flew home on a 1960s-era plane bound for an aviation museum after being stranded by the pandemic in Alaska for months.

Thomas Waerner and his lead dog, K2, landed in Sola, Norway, after being stranded for three months in Alaska.Credit...Carina Johansen/EPA, via Shutterstock

Thomas Waerner of Norway, the Iditarod sled dog race winner who was trapped in Alaska for three months, made it home on Wednesday after a 20-hour flight.

His unconventional ride was a 1960s-era DC-6B airplane that happened to be bound for an aviation museum in Norway. It was an improvised solution after numerous commercial and cargo flights from Alaska were canceled and Waerner found he could not get his 16 dogs home. Flying back without them was not an option, he said.

The flight, on a plane that has not been used for regular commercial travel since the 1970s, was not without incident. “We started at 3 a.m. in Fairbanks, went 40 minutes, and we had problems with an engine,” Waerner said. “We had to turn around and go back.” A few hours of work by mechanics, and the plane was ready to try again.

The cabin was unpressurized. “The old engines make a lot of noise,” Waerner said. “It was really loud. And it was pretty cold in the plane.”

Nothing much bothered the dogs though. “As soon as you put them in the box, they fall asleep.”

The plane could not make the 3,800 miles uninterrupted, so a stop was made after four and a half hours in Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Although it slowed Waerner’s return, it was a good opportunity for the dogs to get out and exercise.

About 30 people who had heard of his odyssey turned up at the Yellowknife airport. “That was really fun,” Waerner said. “They helped us walk the dogs.”

After a 16-hour second leg to Sola, Norway, and a nine-hour drive, Waerner made it home at 6 a.m. local time on Wednesday. Despite the early hour, some friends and acquaintances were waiting in the road with flags to celebrate his win and return. “That was a great feeling,” he said.

The dogs were pleased too. “It’s the same as for me and you: It’s nice for them to be in their own bed. They were excited to be home.”

They will get some well-earned rest. “This time of year for them, it’s having fun, turning them loose and letting them play, not much training,” Waerner said.

It won’t last forever though, and that’s OK with the dogs. “Working dogs like to work,” he said. “You can’t just leave them in the yard.”

Waerner plans to return to Alaska to defend his Iditarod title next year.

Just two days into its preseason, Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan has suffered a setback. A game between the Yomiuri Giants and the Saitama Seibu Lions was canceled Wednesday because two Giants tested positive for coronavirus.

Shortstop Hayato Sakamoto, the team captain and most valuable player of the Central League, and catcher Takuzo Oshiro tested positive. The team said the players were surprised by the results and had not shown symptoms of Covid-19. They will leave the team for quarantine.

Separately, Mu Kanazaki of Nagoya Grampus in soccer’s J.League also tested positive. The J.League has been planning a July 4 relaunch.

Formula One racing is a sport that is uncommonly worldwide, which is not ideal in a pandemic. Its season, which was supposed to begin in March, has yet to start, and a dozen races have been canceled or postponed.

The series now has a plan to get in some races without so much world traveling: double up at some tracks.

An eight-race schedule, announced this week, will begin July 5 with two races a week apart in Spielberg, Austria. Britain will also get two races in Silverstone, England. Single races in Hungary, Spain, Belgium and Italy will round out the schedule for now.

Formula One races are traditionally named after the nation in which they are held, but with the unusual back-to-back races at a single track, a new nomenclature was needed. So the Austrian Grand Prix will be followed by the Styrian Grand Prix, named for the Austrian state. For the second race in England, the name chosen was the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix, perhaps puzzling in that the British Grand Prix is 90 years old. (It has been a part of the F1 series for 70 years.)

For logistical and health reasons, the decision was made to hold all the races in Europe. That leaves out, at least for now, originally planned races in Australia, Asia, the Middle East and North and South America.

Major League Soccer and its players completed a one-year extension of their collective bargaining agreement through 2025 that will allow M.L.S. to restart its season.

A deal had been agreed to in February, but not formally ratified. In the interim, owners asked for concessions to offset the revenue lost to the coronavirus pandemic, and threatened to lock out the players if they did not get them. The league will lose $1 billion in revenue because of the pandemic, its commissioner, Don Garber, claimed Wednesday. M.L.S., more than other major leagues in North America, relies heavily on game day revenue more so than television money.

Under the new deal, the players agreed to a 7.5 percent salary cut, multiple news media sources reported.

Like the N.B.A., the league is hoping to start its season at Disney World in Florida, beginning sometime this summer. After about a month, the league hopes to resume games in home stadiums, although it said it was not ready to announce any specifics. Garber did say that he expected that even those games would very likely be played without fans.

Victor Mather covers every sport for The Times. More about Victor Mather

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