Ben Livesey is not giving up

Ben Livesey is still racing and gives his best to reach the finish line. He is now resting in Levajok with nine dogs still in his team. The Musher from Great Britain with the startnumber 23 is behind the other Mushers but keeps his goal to see the finish line.

Ben Livesey is not like the ordinary english man. He dislikes football and loves snow and ice. Now he is the second Englishman in the history of Finnmarksløpet to finish the world's northernmost sled dog race. But with a team of dogs he has fostered and trained himself. He follows in the footsteps of Jason De Carteret, who finished the race before, but not with his own dogs.

He has been living in Norway for nine years now, but comes originally from Preston in the north of England. With his sense for quality he chose to settle at the beautiful Jøkelfjord in Troms, North Norway. On a daily basis he is working with children who are having drug problems - if he is not standing on a dog sled. 

When Ben signed up for the first time he didnt know for what he was letting himself into - I was naive and the dogs were not well trained. In 2004 he had to give up after 350 km because it was just not possible anymore. He was very disappointed but wanted to learn from the mistake. In 2005 he did much better, everybody was in top shape, dog and Musher. But after a couple of hundreds kilometers he did feel the strain and thought to have rested to short at the checkpoints. But finally it worked out and he crossed happily the finish line.

Now he is back at Finnmarkslopet and tries to work out his new strategy to rest longer in the checkpoints and to go easy on the dogs. Hopefully he will reach Alta. We are eager to see him crossing finish line.