You never sausage a show

The famous All-Alaskan Racing Pigs were off on a grand adventure that continues today. Alaska hasn't been home for a while now — talk about a long, boaring commute — but the team is still looking forward to another season of sizzling racing action.

Where we are now

The show first appeared in Fairbanks in 1987. Since then the racers have visited events in nine states, mostly across the west. The team stops at around thirty events a year and spends its down time in western Oregon. This season that works out to 263 show days across 4 states.

The team

Eight athletes race four at a time around a hundred-foot track padded with wood shavings. A typical show is three rounds, with the championship race pitting the four fastest racers from the earlier heats — and one surprise feature before the final. They run flat track and hurdles, and take their breaks in the luxurious, air-conditioned Piggy Penthouse.

A breed worth saving

We race Gloucestershire Old Spots. The breed dwindled to as low as 22 pigs in the United States, and as late as the 1990s there were fewer than 200 breeding animals. All-Alaskan Racing Pigs has worked with American breeders and The Livestock Conservancy to help rebuild the numbers, and the recovery is going well — the breed moved from the Critically Endangered list to the Threatened list in 2015.

Old Spots were developed in England, so they thrive in the Northwest. They prefer an outdoor life and are excellent foragers, which makes them well suited to small and backyard farms. Fans get to see a heritage breed that represents farm animals as they existed centuries ago — and the pigs love the attention.