{"id":17545,"date":"2016-05-02T08:00:54","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T15:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/iditarod-bans-musher-from-17-race\/"},"modified":"2016-05-02T08:00:54","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T15:00:54","slug":"iditarod-bans-musher-from-17-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/iditarod-bans-musher-from-17-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Iditarod bans musher from ’17 race"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE<\/strong> \u2014 A musher who has been charged in a domestic violence case has been banned from next year\u2019s Iditarod, race officials announced Friday in Alaska.<\/p>\n

The Iditarod Trail Committee Board said in a prepared statement that it \u201cwill not accept race applications from Travis Beals in 2017 and for an indefinite period of time thereafter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beals faces misdemeanor assault and criminal mischief charges filed in state court in Palmer for a Dec. 21 incident in Willow, a small community about 50 miles north of Anchorage where the annual 1,000-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race to Nome begins.<\/p>\n

Charging documents aren\u2019t available online, but the Alaska Dispatch News reported that the documents allege Beals \u201cgrabbed (the victim) in a headlock, picking her up off the couch, physically escorted her to the door and pushed her out of the (Willow) cabin (they shared) into the yard, causing (her) to be placed in fear of imminent physical injury.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beals, who owns a kennel and dog sled tourism business in Seward, Alaska, didn\u2019t immediately return messages or a text Friday to The Associated Press. Beals finished 18th in this year\u2019s 1,000-mile Iditarod race across Alaska. In an email to the AP, Beals\u2019 public defender, Windy Hannaman, declined to comment since the case is not yet resolved.<\/p>\n

Beals\u2019 case on April 14 was sent to therapeutic court. According to the state court\u2019s website, the therapeutic court is an alternative justice model in which participants choose treatment over incarceration and are monitored by a judge, district attorney, defense counsel, probation officer and a substance abuse or mental health provider.<\/p>\n

The Iditarod statement said the length of Beals\u2019 ban on participating beyond 2017 \u201cwill depend in large part on documentation of successful completion of all court-ordered rehabilitation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Race officials became aware of the pending court case on Jan. 22.<\/p>\n

\u201cEarly on, we felt as though we really needed to allow the legal system to run its course and base any disciplinary decision we might need to make as an organization on the outcome of that court case, and so that\u2019s why he was allowed to run this year\u2019s race,\u201d Stan Hooley, the race\u2019s chief executive office, told The Associated Press in a phone interview Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut in the end, I think the board wanted to take action that was a little more expedient than that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Beals did not attend the Friday board meeting in Anchorage, but Hooley said they called Beals to let him know their decision simultaneous to the public announcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs one might expect, it was hard news to take, but you know, hopefully as part of this process … both parties are getting the help that they need and hopefully there\u2019s a better ending to this story,\u201d Hooley said.<\/p>\n

According to his biography on the Iditarod web page, Beals has participated in the race since 2013 and was named the race\u2019s most improved musher last year. His 11th-place finish in 2015 was a marked improvement over the identical 37th-place finishes he had in 2013 and 2014.<\/p>\n

The statement from the board of the world\u2019s most famous sled dog race notes that domestic violence is a \u201cpervasive problem in the State of Alaska and society in general.\u201d<\/p>\n

Race officials said they will \u201cimmediately implement a process of reviewing its rules and policies, with the assistance of an advisory committee with the objective of revising those rules for future races to better address this serious societal issue.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014 A musher who has been charged in a domestic violence case has been banned from next year\u2019s Iditarod, race officials announced Friday in Alaska. The Iditarod Trail Committee Board said in a prepared statement that it \u201cwill not accept race applications from Travis Beals in 2017 and for an indefinite period of time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-17545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17545"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}