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Rachael ScdorisRachael Scdoris (born February 1, 1985) is an American dog musher and cross country runner who became the first legally blind person to compete in the 1,161 mile (1,868 km) Iditarod dog sled race across the U.S. state of Alaska. Scdoris was born in Bend, Oregon with congenital achromatopsia, an uncorrectable visual disorder. Her vision is 20/200, and she is colorblind. In 1997, Scdoris competed her first dog sled race, and placed 4th in the Frog Lake Race, and later won several local short-distance races. In 2001, she competed in the 500 mile (805 km) International Pedigree Stage Stop Sled Dog Race, and became the first blind person and the youngest musher to complete an event of that distance. In 2003, the Iditarod Trail Committee approved her request under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 for special accomodations to compete in the much longer and more rigorous Iditarod. Scdoris completed the qualifying races in 2004, placing 11th in the 350-mile (563 km) Race to the Sky in Montana, and 6th in the 400-mile (644 km) John Beargrease Mid-Distance Marathon in Minnesota. On March 5 she started the 2005 Iditarod in Anchorage, Alaska, with "visual interpreter" Paul Ellering, who warned her of trail conditions by radio or shouting. The two-way radios broke several times during the race during crashes, which are relatively common especially among rookies. "I had a nice little encounter with a tree... the tree won".http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/PersonOfWeek/story?id=572838&page=1 No End in Sight: The Rachael Scdoris Story by Rick Steber (ISBN 0945134347) was published in 2004. External links Scdoris, Rachael Scdoris, Rachael Scdoris, Rachael
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